SUBTEXT Literature and Film Podcast

By Wes Alwan and Erin O'Luanaigh

What's SUBTEXT Literature and Film Podcast about?

SUBTEXT is a podcast about the human condition, and what we can learn about it from the greatest inventions of the human imagination: fiction, film, drama, poetry, essays, and criticism. Each episode, philosopher Wes Alwan and poet Erin O’Luanaigh explore life’s big questions by conducting a close reading of a text or film and co-writing an audio essay about it in real time.

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SUBTEXT Literature and Film Podcast episodes:

01.15.2024
Identity and Infamy in “Citizen Kane” (1941) (Part 2)
Wes & Erin continue their discussion of Orson Welles’s "Citizen Kane." Thanks to our sponsor for this episode, HelloFresh. Go to HelloFresh.com/subtextfree and use code subtextfree for free breakfast for life.
01.08.2024
Identity and Infamy in “Citizen Kane” (1941) (Part 1)
It’s a film bursting with objects—the treasure troves of Xanadu, a snowglobe, jigsaw puzzles, a winner’s cup, the famous sled. Even the conceptual elements of the film’s plot are expressed tangibly. Kane’s mind-boggling wealth isn’t an abstraction, but a list...
12.25.2023
Shakespeare’s “The Winter’s Tale” (Part 6)
Part 6 of Wes & Erin's discussion of Shakespeare’s "The Winter’s Tale." Thanks to our sponsor for this episode, St. John's College. Learn more about undergraduate--and graduate--Great Books programs at St. John's in Santa Fe, New Mexico and Annapolis, Maryland...
12.18.2023
Shakespeare’s “The Winter’s Tale” (Part 5)
Part 5 of Wes & Erin's discussion of Shakespeare’s "The Winter’s Tale." Thanks to our sponsor for this episode, St. John's College. Learn more about undergraduate--and graduate--Great Books programs at St. John's in Santa Fe, New Mexico and Annapolis, Maryland...
12.11.2023
Shakespeare’s “The Winter’s Tale” (Part 4)
Part 4 of Wes & Erin's discussion of Shakespeare’s "The Winter’s Tale." Thanks to our sponsor for this episode, HelloFresh. Go to HelloFresh.com/subtextfree and use code subtextfree for free breakfast for life.
12.04.2023
Shakespeare’s “The Winter’s Tale” (Part 3)
Part 3 of Wes & Erin's discussion of Shakespeare’s "The Winter’s Tale." Thanks to our sponsor for this episode, St. John's College. Learn more about undergraduate--and graduate--Great Books programs at St. John's in Santa Fe, New Mexico and Annapolis, Maryland...
11.27.2023
Shakespeare’s “The Winter’s Tale” (Part 2)
Part 2 of Wes & Erin's discussion of Shakespeare’s "The Winter’s Tale." Thanks to our sponsor for this episode, St. John's College. Learn more about undergraduate--and graduate--Great Books programs at St. John's in Santa Fe, New Mexico and Annapolis, Maryland...
11.20.2023
The Emptiness of Signification in Shakespeare’s “The Winter’s Tale” (Part 1)
When King Leontes accuses his pregnant wife of adultery, the nobleman Antigonus assumes that Leontes has been “abused and by some putter-on”—in other words, some Iago-like villain has been putting malevolent ideas into his head. In fact, Leontes is the...
11.13.2023
(post)script: Post-Tryst (Woody Allen’s “Hannah and Her Sisters”)
Wes & Erin continue their discussion of Woody Allen's "Hannah and Her Sisters." For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes.
11.06.2023
The Tyranny of the Good in Woody Allen’s “Hannah and Her Sisters”
Hannah supports her sisters. She’s a source of money, encouragement, and advice, and seems to ask for nothing in return. In fact, she’s so giving and self-reliant that her husband Eliott begins to believe that she has no needs. This...
10.30.2023
Odysseus and Penelope’s Comedy of Remarriage (“The Odyssey,” Postscript to Part 3)
Wes & Erin conclude their discussion of "The Odyssey," with a focus on Odysseus and Penelope getting re-acquainted with each other in Books 19 and 23. We discuss Penelope asking Odysseus-in-disguise whether she should marry a suitor, but tells him...
10.23.2023
Terminal Wooings in “The Odyssey” (Part 3 of 3)
Wes & Erin discuss the final 12 books of "The Odyssey." Having learned the lessons of the murder of Agamemnon, Odysseus does not rush straight home to his wife and children, once he arrives at Ithaca. Athena is impressed--but why,...
09.25.2023
Foolish Adventures in “The Odyssey” (Part 2 of 3)
Wes & Erin continue their discussion of the Odyssey, translated by Emily Wilson. In this episode, part 2 of our 3-part series, they look closely at the heart of the poem, books 5-12, in which Odysseus arrives in Phaeacia and...
08.28.2023
Home as Identity in “The Odyssey”
He was famously a man of many ways, whether we interpret these as abilities or norms; designs or deceptions; reasons or identities. Yet despite such resources, he was also famously stuck, making a 10-year odyssey of his attempt to return...
07.31.2023
Competing Affections in “The Lion in Winter”
Before Henry VIII changed history for lack of a son, Henry II had too many. His eldest, Richard, a fierce soldier who controls the wealthy Aquitaine, is the favorite of his mother, Eleanor. The youngest, John, is immature and dull,...
07.03.2023
Friendship and Honor in “Becket” (1964)
In Jean Anouilh’s 1959 play “Becket,” the titular character seems at first to be a Saxon collaborationist to the Norman rule of England, and a man who has sacrificed his personal honor to his friendship with King Henry II and,...
06.19.2023
(post)script: Post-Capitation (“Carried Away” by Alice Munro)
Wes & Erin continue their discussion of Alice Munro's "Carried Away."
06.05.2023
Losing Your Head in Alice Munro’s “Carried Away”
Jack, a Canadian soldier recuperating in a European hospital during World War I, begins a correspondence with Louisa, the librarian in his hometown whom he has only seen and loved from afar. Their letters turn romantic. But when the war...
05.16.2023
Time and Taboo in “Back to the Future” (1985)
In the parking lot of the Twin Pines Mall, Doc Brown plans to use his Delorean time machine to head 25 years into the future and see, as he puts it, “the progress of mankind.” But like the license plate...
04.10.2023
The Violence of Redemption in John Donne’s “Batter My Heart” (Holy Sonnet 14)
In “Holy Sonnet 14,” John Donne would like his “three person’d God” to break instead of knock, blow instead of breathe, and burn instead of shine. This vision of redemption is about remaking rather than reform. And it seems to...
03.13.2023
Mortal Pretensions in John Donne’s “Death Be Not Proud” (Holy Sonnet 10)
A recusant Catholic turned Protestant, a rake turned priest, a scholar, lawyer, politician, soldier, secretary, sermonizer, and of course, a poet— John Donne’s biography contains so many scuttled identities and discrete lives, perhaps its no wonder that his great subjects...
02.13.2023
Trauma and Repetition in Roman Polanski’s “Chinatown” (1974)
Roman Polanksi’s 1974 film “Chinatown” seems to have little to do with its titular neighborhood, which is the setting for only one horrible and final scene. Chinatown functions instead to represent the traumatic moment that drives this story just because...
01.16.2023
Better and Bested in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”
It’s a play full of contradictions, secrets, lies, and unspoken rules. It’s a play decidedly for adults, but about a child—an imaginary one, no less. It takes place on a college campus, but it is absent of students. And it’s...
12.19.2022
Pagan Poetics in “Sunday Morning” by Wallace Stevens
Wallace Stevens was an ungainly insurance executive, but his poetry is serene and secularly reverential. In particular, his poem “Sunday Morning” seems to suggest that the rhythm of the natural world—if we give it enough rapt attention—is as good as...
11.21.2022
Production for Use in “His Girl Friday”
Howard Hawks’s 1940 film His Girl Friday knits together two plots from two very different genres. One is a romantic comedy that intends to reunite its main couple in something like wedded bliss. The other is a dark drama of...
10.24.2022
Post-Doctoral Bedevilment in Christopher Marlowe’s “Dr. Faustus”
Dr. Faustus expected more from his education. After a lifetime of study, his professional options—philosophy, medicine, law, and theology—all seem disappointingly ordinary. He is of course not the first to have this experience. At a societal level, the promise of...
09.26.2022
Fate and Blame in “Long Day’s Journey into Night”
Who is to blame for Mary Tyrone’s morphine addiction? Is it Mary herself? Is it Edmund, her younger son, after whose difficult birth Mary was first prescribed the drug? Is it Jamie, her older son, who caused the death of...
05.09.2022
Work as Madness in “The Bridge on the River Kwai” (1957)
In the beginning, Colonel Nicholson seems to be a stickler for principle, willing to die rather than have his officers do menial labor in a Japanese prison camp. In the end, his principles seem to be a cover for personal...
04.11.2022
What Falls Upon the Living in James Joyce’s “The Dead”
In 1906, presumably finished with his short story collection Dubliners, James Joyce wrote to his brother with dissatisfaction that, though he set about to create a comprehensive portrait of Ireland’s capital city, he had not managed to render its famous,...
03.14.2022
Finding Home in Stephen Spielberg’s “E.T.” (1982)
Stephen Spielberg once said that he was “still waiting to get out of [his] Peter Pan shoes and into [his] loafers.” Being a filmmaker, he said, was his way of remaining a child. Sort of. While his film “E.T.” is...
02.28.2022
The Power of Calm: Two Wordsworth Sonnets
William Wordsworth wrote no fewer than 523 sonnets over the course of his career. (By comparison, the second most prolific Romantic sonneteer was Keats with a paltry 67.) Two of Wordsworth’s best-loved efforts in the form are both Petrarchan sonnets...
02.14.2022
What Nature Betrays: Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey” (Part 2)
In Part 1 of our discussion of “Tintern Abbey,” we talked about whether Wordsworth was right to suggest that our experience of nature was good not just for restoring our weary spirits, but for helping us to mature and even...
01.31.2022
Mother Nature’s Nurture in Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey” (Part 1)
After an absence of five years, the poet William Wordsworth returned to the idyllic ruins of a medieval monastery along the River Wye. The spot was perhaps not so very different from his last visit, but Wordsworth found that he...
01.17.2022
The Fool Gets Hurt in Fellini’s “La Strada” (1954)
Fellini called his film "La Strada" a dangerous representation of his identity, and had a nervous breakdown just before completing its shooting. Perhaps this identity, and its vulnerability, have something to do with the film’s portrayal of a disappointed hope...
01.03.2022
False Roles and Fictitious Selves in “The Awakening” by Kate Chopin
In the late 19th century, the “New Woman” was a term coined by Henry James for a particular kind of feminist who demanded freedom of behavior, dress, education, and sexuality. Out of that paradigm came "The Awakening," a novel that...
12.27.2021
(post)script: Post-Wonderful
Wes & Erin continue their discussion of "It's a Wonderful Life."
12.20.2021
The Pain of Anonymity in “It’s a Wonderful Life” (1946)
Though sometimes accused of a sentimentality dubbed “Capracorn,” Frank Capra’s films are clear-eyed about the suffering of the everyman. A quintessential director of the Great Depression and World War II eras, Capra expressed better than most the desperation at the...
12.13.2021
(post)script: Is “Die Hard” a Christmas Movie?
Wes & Erin continue their discussion of "Die Hard."
12.06.2021
Attachments “Die Hard” at Nakatomi Tower
It’s a Christmas movie, some say, and in the end the holiday classic “Let it Snow” plays over the credits. But what counts as snow in the final scenes is a confetti of smoke, debris, and millions of dollars of...
11.22.2021
Mad as Hell in “Network” (1976)
Diana Christensen is a television executive in search of an angry show—something that articulates the rage of the average viewer. In Howard Beale, failed newscaster turned mad-as-hell prophet, she seems to get exactly what she’s looking for. Yet in doing...
11.08.2021
Autonomy and Incest in Sophocles’s “Oedipus Rex”
His first claim to fame was the solution to a riddle that earned him a kingdom by sheer force of intellect. His second was a doomed attempt to escape the particularly gruesome fates of patricide and incest. With his first...
10.25.2021
Gender Opera in “Tootsie”
How do you become the many you truly are? Try becoming the woman you aren’t. While Michael Dorsey can take the blame for his desperate transformation into Dorothy Michaels, it’s she who gets the credit for making him a better...
10.11.2021
Our Name is Subtext, Podcast of Podcasts. Hear our “Ozymandias” Discussion, Ye Listeners, and Despair!
The land is not just ancient but “antique,” and while many of its artifacts end up as the possessions of distant museums, they may yet be capable of overpowering their audiences. Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ozymandias” is traditionally taken as an...
09.27.2021
Sex and Tech in “Alien” by Ridley Scott
The Nostromo is a labyrinthine spaceship, a hulking ore refinery run on a sophisticated computer operating system and manned by a crew of seven. But somehow it’s not the most impressive piece of technology in Ridley Scott’s 1979 film "Alien."...
09.13.2021
Dead Wall Reveries in Melville’s “Bartleby the Scrivener”
Melville’s “Bartleby the Scrivener” is subtitled a “Story of Wall St.,” yet there is almost nothing in it of the bustle of city life, and entirely nothing in it of the hustle of the trading floor. The story’s walls block...
08.30.2021
Cursed Kids or Psych-Au Pair? “The Turn of the Screw” by Henry James
The story begins and ends with two variations on the meaning of the title. On the one hand, to give another turn of the screw is to ratchet up the horror of a good ghost story, in this case by...
08.16.2021
Gentility and Injustice in “Gone with the Wind” (1939)
Gone with the Wind— adjusted for inflation, the highest-grossing film in American history— has undergone several critical reappraisals in the 82 years since its production and release. Certainly the film romanticizes the Antebellum South and the Confederacy while glossing over...
08.02.2021
Realism as Cruelty in “A Streetcar Named Desire” by Tennessee Williams
In the transition from stage to screen, "A Streetcar Named Desire" retained its long-running Broadway cast with a single exception: the role of Blanche Dubois, which passed from Jessica Tandy to Vivien Leigh. Like Blanche, Leigh was the odd woman...
07.19.2021
Prestidigitocracy in “The Wizard of Oz” (1939)
The Wizard of Oz is supposed by the land’s inhabitants to be its most powerful magician. But far from having any actual power, he is not even native to the place in which real magic is in plentiful supply. Oddly,...
07.05.2021
Formulated Phrases in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T. S. Eliot: Part 2
Wes & Erin continue their analysis of T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” In Part 1, they covered roughly the first third of the poem. In Part 2, they begin with a discussion of Prufrock’s coffee...

What's SUBTEXT Literature and Film Podcast about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

SUBTEXT Literature and Film Podcast episodes:

Identity and Infamy in “Citizen Kane” (1941) (Part 2)

Identity and Infamy in “Citizen Kane” (1941) (Part 1)

Shakespeare’s “The Winter’s Tale” (Part 6)

Shakespeare’s “The Winter’s Tale” (Part 5)

Shakespeare’s “The Winter’s Tale” (Part 4)

Shakespeare’s “The Winter’s Tale” (Part 3)

Shakespeare’s “The Winter’s Tale” (Part 2)

The Emptiness of Signification in Shakespeare’s “The Winter’s Tale” (Part 1)

(post)script: Post-Tryst (Woody Allen’s “Hannah and Her Sisters”)

The Tyranny of the Good in Woody Allen’s “Hannah and Her Sisters”

Odysseus and Penelope’s Comedy of Remarriage (“The Odyssey,” Postscript to Part 3)

Terminal Wooings in “The Odyssey” (Part 3 of 3)

Foolish Adventures in “The Odyssey” (Part 2 of 3)

Home as Identity in “The Odyssey”

Competing Affections in “The Lion in Winter”

Friendship and Honor in “Becket” (1964)

(post)script: Post-Capitation (“Carried Away” by Alice Munro)

Losing Your Head in Alice Munro’s “Carried Away”

Time and Taboo in “Back to the Future” (1985)

The Violence of Redemption in John Donne’s “Batter My Heart” (Holy Sonnet 14)

Mortal Pretensions in John Donne’s “Death Be Not Proud” (Holy Sonnet 10)

Trauma and Repetition in Roman Polanski’s “Chinatown” (1974)

Better and Bested in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”

Pagan Poetics in “Sunday Morning” by Wallace Stevens

Production for Use in “His Girl Friday”

Post-Doctoral Bedevilment in Christopher Marlowe’s “Dr. Faustus”

Fate and Blame in “Long Day’s Journey into Night”

Work as Madness in “The Bridge on the River Kwai” (1957)

What Falls Upon the Living in James Joyce’s “The Dead”

Finding Home in Stephen Spielberg’s “E.T.” (1982)

The Power of Calm: Two Wordsworth Sonnets

What Nature Betrays: Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey” (Part 2)

Mother Nature’s Nurture in Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey” (Part 1)

The Fool Gets Hurt in Fellini’s “La Strada” (1954)

False Roles and Fictitious Selves in “The Awakening” by Kate Chopin

(post)script: Post-Wonderful

The Pain of Anonymity in “It’s a Wonderful Life” (1946)

(post)script: Is “Die Hard” a Christmas Movie?

Attachments “Die Hard” at Nakatomi Tower

Mad as Hell in “Network” (1976)

Autonomy and Incest in Sophocles’s “Oedipus Rex”

Gender Opera in “Tootsie”

Our Name is Subtext, Podcast of Podcasts. Hear our “Ozymandias” Discussion, Ye Listeners, and Despair!

Sex and Tech in “Alien” by Ridley Scott

Dead Wall Reveries in Melville’s “Bartleby the Scrivener”

Cursed Kids or Psych-Au Pair? “The Turn of the Screw” by Henry James

Gentility and Injustice in “Gone with the Wind” (1939)

Realism as Cruelty in “A Streetcar Named Desire” by Tennessee Williams

Prestidigitocracy in “The Wizard of Oz” (1939)

Formulated Phrases in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T. S. Eliot: Part 2