Following the 2014 State of the Union address, this episode considers presidential rhetoric in its political and historical context. PhD student Duncan Moench interviews Jeffrey Tulis, author The Rhetorical Presidency. Moench asks Tulis's view of Obama's biggest rhetorical successes and failures thus far.

"You cannot grow a beard in a moment of passion," wrote G.K. Chesterton. As unfortunately true as that may be, people today are increasingly passionate about beards, mustaches and generally men's grooming, especially in Austin, Texas. During this second episode of Zeugma's second season, group members Andy Uzendoski and Jake Cowan take on the technology and visual rhetoric surrounding facial hair in honor of Movember.

Welcome to the second season of Zeugma, the podcast hosted by the Digital Writing and Research Lab at the University of Texas at Austin. In the season's first episode, Frightening, producer Michael Roberts looks at the role of sound in horror films. We start off with live footage from two horror film conventions, where participants describe their favorite horror sounds and the effects these sounds have on them. Next is an interview with Spencer Hickman, founder and head of Death Waltz Records, a label dedicated to pressing old horror movie soundtracks to vinyl. We conclude the episode with a review and discussion of the film Berberian Sound Studio, in which a sound engineer loses his mind over a horror film production. All of these segments engage the question what it is about certain sounds that at once chills our bones and at the same time draws us to them.

This episode of Zeugma focuses on the rhetoric of food, taking the prodigious food and restaurant scene of Austin, Texas (the podcast's hometown), as a starting point. We talk with a University of Texas instructor who taught a class on the rhetoric of food, an Austin-based food podcaster, and the executive chef of Contigo, an Austin restaurant. In all these interviews, we consider the way food gets rhetorically framed, constructed, discussed, and consumed. In short, what do we talk about when we talk about food?

This episode of Zeugma brings together a number of elements and subjects: First comes an interview about tactical media and digital activism with Dr. Rita Raley, Associate Professor of English at the University of California-Santa Barbara. Next, the University of Louisville's Ryan Trauman and Harley Ferris explore ways of incorporating audio assignments into undergraduate rhetoric and composition courses. Finally, we consider the productive forms of risk and failure that come with bringing new media into such courses, with various members of the DWRL offering their own experiences of techno-pedagogical failures.

This episode features music from Aesthetic Evidence and Maciej Bether. All music obtained via Jamendo and used under a Creative Commons license.

In this episode, the Zeugma team explores the various ways "myths" are made and spread via digital and analog technologies. We start by considering of the prevalance of Internet cat memes, especially those featuring cats as mythic figures. After that, Zeugma team member Axel Bohmann interviews documentary maker Ben Steinbauer about his film Winnebago Man, which focuses on the spread of a pre-web meme. Finally, Axel talks with University of Texas graduate student Anne Stewart about her work tracing the spread of myths about birth control on the Internet.

A word of warning that some segments of this episode contain adult language that may be inappropriate for some listeners.

This week's episode comes to you from the 2013 Conference on College Composition and Communication in Las Vegas, NV. Zeugma team members and guest contributors sit down to interview four scholars and conference attendees doing remarkable work at the intersections of rhetoric, composition, pedagogy, and technology. Those interviewees are Drs. Jim Brown, Ron Brooks, Jenny Rice, and Kathleen Blake Yancey.

For more details, visit our podcast's main website.

This week's episode of Zeugma focuses on the practice of Internet trolling. Starting with a quick consideration of the complex etymology of the term, we discuss trolls mythical and real, interview trolling scholar Dr. Whitney Phillips, and get stories and thoughts from two folks with deep ties to trolling communities on Reddit and the game Eve Online.

Trigger Warning: Due to discussions of last fall's Violentacrez controversy, as well as the sexist, racist, and homophobic tropes commonplace in many trolling practices, this episode contains references to potentially disturbing subject matter. 

This episode of Zeugma focuses on procrastination, a storied American pastime that can be both facilitated and interrupted by the Internet. The Zeugma team considers and tests various methods of communal and individual procrastination prevention, speaks with a UT professor who's an expert on procrastination, and talks to a gamer who's an expert at procrastinating. And, of course, we do a little procrastinating of our own.

Today's episode focuses on the various ways in which digital technologies and online spaces are shaping, and in some ways reshaping, the ways in which commodities and information are shared. Cars, couches, music, and various forms of writing are all up for grabs as the Zeugma team members talk and interview their way around sharing. Featuring interviews with Stefan, a dedicated and well-traveled part of the Couchsurfing community, and Anthony Volodkin, creator of the music-blog aggregator Hype Machine.