With Honors

This week, we stayed after class and played Dungeons & Dragons in preparation for meeting Matt Dinniman, legendary author of the hit series Dungeon Crawler Carl.

With Honors is a Free Zone Radio production. You can find this show alongside our other podcast, Second Stage, on major platforms like Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.

Also listen to our brother podcast with Drew Haston, A Deadman’s Books. You can find him on Spotify and Apple Podcasts as well.

This episode also features “Groove Delight” by Musinova and a ton of ambient dungeon exploration music from YouTube and Tabletopaudio.com, available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license.

It’s graduation week, and we are approaching the end of Season 2. AP Lit culminated their study with a viewing of Dead Poets’ Society. We brought in their AP Lang teacher, Tobi Swift, and had one last hurrah, one last barbaric YAWP before signing off on the school year.

With Honors is a Free Zone Radio production. You can find this show alongside our other podcast, Second Stage, on major platforms like Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.

Also, throw some love at our brother podcast with Drew Haston, A Deadman’s Books. You can find him on Spotify and Apple Podcasts as well.

This episode also features a sampling of music from Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings, as well as “Groove Delight” by Musinova and an arrangement of “Pomp and Circumstance” originally by Sir Edward Elgar, used here under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license.

It’s the first full week of May 2026, and that means it’s Teacher Appreciation Week. In this episode, I get to be a good student again and learn from the master, Gail Adcock. We also get to sit with the legend Amy Hawkins.. Together, we examine Khaled Hosseini’s 2003 novel The Kite Runner, what made it classroom worthy, and why it matters just as much to readers of 2026 as it did twenty years ago.

With Honors is a Free Zone Radio production. You can find this show alongside our other podcast, Second Stage, on major platforms like Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.

Also, throw some love at our brother podcast with Drew Haston, A Deadman’s Books. You can find him on Spotify and Apple Podcasts as well.

This episode also features “Groove Delight” by Musinova and “Aspiration” by BlackTrendMusic, available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license.

This week I talk to Whittney, a kid who knows just as much about pain and loss as anyone. She chose to explore how some of our popular literature examines that question too. Not “What’s the meaning of life” (which is probably just a trap question anyway), but “What makes life meaningful?”

With Honors is a Free Zone Radio production. You can find this show alongside our other podcast, Second Stage, on major platforms like Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.

Also, throw some love at our brother podcast with Drew Haston, A Deadman’s Books. You can find him on Spotify and Apple Podcasts as well.

This episode also features “Groove Delight” by Musinova and “Aspiration” by BlackTrendMusic, available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license.

Is The Great Gatsby still relevant to America in 2026? Is America in 2026 still a place where the wealthy billionaires cavort like Greek gods, and the poor trudge away in the valley of ashes between them? Jackson and I discuss his 5 reasons why this book still reflects America today.

With Honors is a Free Zone Radio production. You can find this show alongside our other podcast, Second Stage, on major platforms like Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.

Also, throw some love at our brother podcast with Drew Haston, A Deadman’s Books. You can find him on Spotify and Apple Podcasts as well.

This episode also features “Groove Delight” by Musinova and “Sipping on Jazz” by BlackTrendMusic, available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license.

There’s two starter types of Honors kids: the typically academically gifted kid, and the underdog hard worker who works their tail off for you. We’re five weeks out from graduation night. And this week, I’m sitting with one of those underdogs. One of our all-time favorites. Big Kev.

With Honors is a Free Zone Radio production. You can find this show alongside our other podcast, Second Stage, on major platforms like Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YoTtube.

Also, throw some love at our brother podcast with Drew Haston, A Deadman’s Books. You can find him on Spotify and Apple Podcasts as well.

This episode also features “Groove Delight” by Musinova and inspiring piano music by BlackTrendMusic, available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license.

This week, the seniors have come back to the table and wanted to talk about what they could have done differently in their four years.

With Honors is a Free Zone Radio production. You can find this show alongside our other podcast, Second Stage, on major platforms like Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.

Also, throw some love at our brother podcast with Drew Haston, A Deadman’s Books. You can find him on Spotify and Apple Podcasts as well.

This episode also features “Groove Delight” by Musinova and inspiring piano music by BlackTrendMusic, available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license.

This week comes with a bonus episode, one of several that are airing through graduation season, all about the typical high school senior’s experience in 2026. Have things changed so much since the 1980s? Were attitudes really that different when I was a senior in the 1990s? Are we basically seeing the same things now in the 2020s?

With Honors is a Free Zone Radio production. You can find this show alongside our other podcast, Second Stage, on major platforms like Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.

Also, throw some love at our brother podcast with Drew Haston, A Deadman’s Books. You can find him on Spotify and Apple Podcasts as well.

Audio used in this episode includes “Groove Delight” by Musinova, “Sipping on Jazz” by Black Trend Music, and an excerpt from a YouTube clip of Road House (1989) with Patrick Swayze. Disclaimer: No ownership of these materials is claimed. All rights belong to their respective copyright holders. These materials are used in connection with commentary, criticism, review, and educational podcasting.

Among the secular celebrations, March is also National Reading Month. And this week, some of my students wanted to discuss the emotional impact they get through reading. Maybe you won’t feel it the same way, but again, just because they celebrate this doesn’t diminish what you get out of it. Because like we always say in this classroom: “People are people are people.”

With Honors is a Free Zone Radio production. You can find it and our new show Second Stage on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.

Also, throw some love at our brother podcast with Drew Haston, A Deadman’s Books. He’s on Spotify and Apple Podcasts too.

This episode features “Groove Delight” by Musinova and “Sipping on Jazz” by BlackTrendMusic, available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license.

It’s here at last. On Friday, March 20, 2026, Project Hail Mary arrived in theaters, and for our class, this wasn’t just any old trip to the movies. This was an epic launch.

With Honors is a Free Zone Radio production. You can find this show alongside our other podcast, Second Stage, on major platforms like Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.

Also, throw some love at our brother podcast with Drew Haston, A Deadman’s Books. You can find him on Spotify and Apple Podcasts as well.

This episode includes audio from: “Groove Delight” by Musinova; “Epic Inspirational Music” by BoDleasons; excerpts from the Project Hail Mary trailer on YouTube; the Project Hail Mary cover of Harry Styles’ “Sign of the Times”; and a mixed segment featuring the Project Hail Mary theme and Oasis’s “Champagne Supernova” from (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?

Disclaimer: I do not claim ownership of these materials. All rights belong to their respective copyright holders. These materials are used in connection with commentary, criticism, review, and educational podcasting.