The Life and Times of Herman Melville: A Weeb for Polynesia

This week we bring you another of Jackie's favorite type of episode: author bios! Even more exciting, we have a MAN joining us, so you can rest assured that this episode will contain about 33% less crying than usual. Even MORE exciting, that man is British, so you KNOW there's absolutely no chance things are going to get overly emotional. Which is good, because our author this week is... really, really extra and had a lot of feelings. That's right, our sometimes-guest, sometimes-editor, sometimes-host Jacob climbs aboard for a deep dive into the life of one of his favorite authors, Herman Melville, who was a card-carrying Meatlovian drama queen.Melville is best known for being the author of Moby-Dick, which we will begin reading and covering throughout the rest of this summer and fall (with other stuff in between). But did you know he's also a peeb? A great-great-uncle, or maybe great-great grandfather, of a famous musician? An extremely weird writer who became a brain-addled bank employee at the tender age of 13? A Nathaniel Hawthorne fanboy to an uncomfortable degree?Listen for these and way more crazy true facts about ol' Hermy M. Topics include: Calvinism, robot butlers, British place-name pronunciations, horned toads, extremely heavy-handed gay innuendos, frightening new neighbors, The Detectorists, Yngwie Malmsteen, Jimmy Buffett, Meatloaf, hot southern soil, Nathaniel Hawthorne, mutinies on the high seas, skin factories, totally normal whale behavior, vagina diagrams, the original M. Dick, birth certificate confusion, perpendicular spouting, and secrets whispered under a gazebo in the pouring rain.Content warnings: death, mental illness, animal cruelty, sexual languageFurther reading: "History's Dick Jokes: On Melville and Hawthorne", by Jordan Alexander Steinhttps://lareviewofbooks.org/article/historys-dick-jokes-on-melville-and-hawthorne/ Jacob's YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/@bigyellowpraxis ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★