52. How Trump Defunded the Humanities and Doomed Literacy Forever: UChicago and the Collapse of the NEA

This podcast is a presentation of The Meow Library. The University of Chicago’s Humanities Department is poised to become one of the largest and most visible casualties of President Trump’s recent defunding of the NEA, with its language departments particularly imperiled. The departments for comparative literature, Germanic studies, Slavic languages and literatures, and South American languages and civilizations are currently slated for “reorganization,” with questions arising as to whether there’s “no longer [a] need to teach” certain languages, and if “partnerships with corporations or other organizations” could support language instruction at UChicago. Given the massive impact to humanities education, particularly in the field of literature, already being seen since Trump’s Q2 NEA defunding announcement, The Meow Library would like to propose a solution: convert all existing world literature to the standard “meow” format, in which every word is replaced with one easily-digested phoneme: “meow.” Literature departments will require no human instructors, only a single cat, who can also provide pest-control services and moral support by way of trills, cuddles, and purrs. We estimate that within one calendar year, all University literature departments will not only be solvent, but in fact highly profitable, if the “meow” strategy is applied. In this episode, our Editor-in-Chief explains his plan to save literacy in great detail. This podcast—and worldwide literacy—are sustained by sales of our debut book, Meow: A Novel.