PODCAST · arts
Do You Even Lit?
by cam and benny feat. rich
stemcel tragics use THE POWER OF FRIENDSHIP to read literary classics
Episodes
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DYEL existential crisis: What's the point of reading fiction anyway?
A provocative listener question has us reflecting on what we're getting out of the project. should we go back to reading more nonfiction? or succumb to TikTok and brainrot? What's the point of being alive at all? A quick inbetween ep before we get into to our next read. WRITE US: We love listener...
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James Baldwin's Sonny's Blues: That Scotch and Milk Goes Down Smooth
A man hasn't played in a year. He sits back down at the piano in front of a crowd, fumbles through the first set to polite applause, and then, with a little help from the band, wades out into the deep water without drowning. That's the ending of the 1957 short story we read this week. It's also...
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Herzog Part II: Great men take on the potato
Wrapping up Saul Bellow's Herzog, where the going gets tough and the tough take baths. First up, the failed murder. Herzog gets his dad's old revolver, works himself into a state of total conviction that killing his ex-wife Madeleine and her lover is not just justified but righteous, and then…
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Saul Bellow's Herzog Part I: How dare you make me sleep with your wife
"If I'm out of my mind, that's okay with me." Part 1 of our dive into Moses Herzog's breakdown. Like all the best books, Herzog follows a manic academic, freshly dumped by his second wife for his own one-legged best friend, who processes the whole disaster by firing off unsent letters to everyone...
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Middlemarch FINALE: It's OK to be mid
"The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts." — Middlemarch The DYEL boys finally finished George Eliot's Middlemarch and finally answered the question of what this thing is about. At least we think we did: A 900-page long cope on being mid. Updated Website: We unveil…
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Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey: Wearing Homer as a skin suit
Rich reflects on his truly deranged reaction to the film, after entering a manic state and staying up all night penning a 2500 word rant. Meanwhile Cam had a nice time at the cinema and gives it a soft seven. Benny liked it too, until he thought about it, and is now hopelessly hung up on whether...
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The Tragedy of Othello: Cucked by the green-eyed monster
O, beware, my lord, of jealousy; It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock The meat it feeds on. Tackling Shakespeare's 1604 play Othello. It goes a lot better than last time, altho Rich gets a bit of a fright when the lead actor comes out in blackface. Othello the outsider: Was interracial...
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Middlemarch, part 2: Pity the man with the young hot wife
"In such a crisis as this, some women begin to hate." Let's go baby, things are getting steamy. Rich isn't sure if he's turned on or terrified by Dorothea, Cam can't figure out whether he'd take blood money, and Ben is torn about whether marrying a psychopath is worth it if she's a hottie. The...
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Middlemarch, part 1: A wish-fulfilment fantasy for spergy scholars
For our big summer read we're cracking into Middlemarch, the 1871 doorstopper written by Mary Ann Evans under her pen name George Eliot. This chat covers the first 30 chapters. Not a whole lot has happened so far but it's a very cosy read. On Eliot and Tolstoy: which way does the influence go?…
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Raymond Carver: Cathedrals even for those without eyes to see
Raymond Carver's Cathedral might be one of the most simple and beloved American short stories, but Benny is determined to overthink it anyway. On meta-deception: before we dive in, Benny obsesses over “meta-deception” and feels betrayed by magicians. On jealousy: is it OK for your wife to write...
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Walking away from 'The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas'
Ursula K. Le Guin's 1973 story The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas has been discussed to death, but the boys have finally cracked the ONE TRUE reading. huddle in Rich remembered this being a glorified trolley problem that would allow us to settle the question of 'who is the most…
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American Pastoral, part 2: The Indigenous American Berserk
Wrapping up our discussion of Philip Roth's American Pastoral, in which the Swede is finally reunited with his missing daughter. it's bleak. On losing your daughter: Can you save people from themselves? Should the Swede have dragged Merry out by the hair? Did he do anything wrong, or is he...
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American Pastoral, part 1: Baby's First Lit Fic
The Swede was the poster boy for the American dream. Football star. Marine. Marries a beauty queen. Inherits dad's glove factory and treats the workers like family. Buys the stone farmhouse in Old Rimrock, New Jersey. Loves his daughter unconditionally. Protests the Vietnam War in his own…
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Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde: Thank God for Incognito Mode
Robert Louis Stevenson's 1886 novella The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde really gets the juices flowing. Rich tells on himself big time, we find out we're all faking our authentic selves, and Benny is forced to bite some weird philosophical bullets. The Ring of Gyges: Are all men secretly...
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Atomised, part 2: Sympathy for the Incel
IMMORTAL ASEXUAL CLONES: YES NO? Did aella's birthday gangbang generate positive externalities? Why is Cam's fridge full of dead chickens? These are the big questions of our age and we are the only ones brave enough to tackle them. Join us as we wrap up our discussion of Houellebecq's Atomised...
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Was the sexual revolution a mistake? (Houellebecq's Atomised, part 1)
Houellebecq's 1998 novel Atomised (also known as The Elementary Particles) is prophetic, provocative and absolutely filthy. This chat covers the first ~200 pages: On the sexual revolution: Are inceldom and looksmaxxing the inevitable consequences of the intrusion of market forces into every facet...
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Stefan Zweig's The Royal Game: What's the ultimate desert island book?
This week's between-novel quick read is Stefan Zweig's The Royal Game: A Chess Story, written in 1941, immediately before Zweig obliterated his map. We argue over the perfect answer to the 'desert island book' question, whether it's possible to fracture your own mind into pieces, why Cam sucks at...
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Moby Dick finale: Ahab Derangement Syndrome
Tell me if you've heard this one: A mentally unstable old man abuses his position of power to pursue his own personal agenda. He alternates between smooth talking—tremendous moxie, the best speeches—and threatening the LOSERS and HATERS who stand in his way. He runs roughshod over checks and...
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Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein: Look how they massacred my boy
Quick film review before we get back to the final part of Moby Dick. Guillermo del Toro's long-awaited Frankenstein adaptation is absolutely cleaning up in the Oscar nominations, including a nod for Best Picture. Benny and Rich make the comparison with Mary Shelley's source material and find it…
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Moby Dick, part 2: A conceptual analysis of Whiteness
We continue our voyage with chapters 40-80 of Herman Melville's leviathan MOBY DICK. Talking nihilism and meaning-making, the deeper significance of making the whale white (seriously), the terrifying vastness of the ocean, animal welfare and charismatic megafauna, and whether we're OK with…
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Moby Dick, part 1: My name is Ishmael and my special interest is whales
Starting the year off right by signing on for an epic voyage with Herman Melville's MOBY DICK; OR, THE WHALE, published in 1851, and widely considered to be the great American novel. It's quite the beast so we're dividing it into three parts, with this first convo covering chapters 1-40. Call me...
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Crashing out of Gravity's Rainbow: A postmortem of our first DNF
Yeah fuck this book. After much blood, sweat, tears, and other unspeakable bodily excretions, we've had enough. This is our first ever DNF after 50+ titles, so we thought we should do a postmortem of what went wrong. Did we not try hard enough? Is Pynchon basically an asshole? Do we have a…
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DYEL wrapped: Most beloved and hated books of 2025
Some festive chit-chat and navel gazing on the year that was. CHAPTERS: (00:00:00) big tiddy goth gfs and rival podcast recs (00:10:09) DYEL wrapped stats analysis (00:19:39) Third best book of the year (00:23:41) Second best book of the year (00:29:01) Best book of the year (00:33:11) Biggest...
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Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow: It's not rocket science
We've been making eyes at the postmodernists for a while, but up until this point have lacked the stones to go take a ride on daddy Pynchon's rocket ship. Now that we have a little experience we thought we were ready for a mature and sophisticated lover like Gravity's Rainbow (1973): 800 pages...
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Murakami's Norwegian Wood: the sadboi and his manic pixie dream girls
In 1987, Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami set himself a challenge: to set aside his magical realism schtick and try to write one 'straight' novel in the realist tradition. The result was Norwegian Wood, in which the author-insert protagonist is transported back to his college days, breaking free...
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A Portrait of the Artist: James Joyce on the difference between tasteful nudes and porn
This week we're reading James Joyce's semi-autobiographical novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, published in 1916. Moments of adolescent significance: on heated dinner-time conversations, a child's keen sense of injustice, the fear of burning in Hellfire, contemplating eternity, sexual...
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C.P. Snow's The Two Cultures: the original stemcels vs shape rotators beef
This week we're discussing C.P. Snow's influential 1959 lecture 'The Two Cultures', on the growing division between literary and scientific intellectuals: "So the great edifice of modern physics goes up, and the majority of the cleverest people in the western world have about as much insight into...
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Butcher's Crossing: John Williams's rougher cut
Back to the novels. This week, the DYEL boys decide to try Butcher's Crossing, the first novel from John Williams, the author famous for writing the so-underrated-it-might-be-overrated-but-probably-is-now-just-correctly-rated novel Stoner. As to be expected, it's not on the same level of Stoner…
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Borges's Library of Babel: Ctrl + F for meaning
The Do You Even Lit boys put down the heavy tomes and choose a short story. Well, we're not sure if it counts as a story. Maybe a thought experiment? This week we’re talking about one of our favourite authors: Jorge Luis Borges. We read The Library of Babel, Borges’s classic meditation on…
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Anna Karenina FINALE: Revenge of the Reddit Atheists
What an absolutely dogshit ending to an otherwise incredible book. We made it through 800 pages for this?? I still love you Tolstoy but seriously wtf bro. This discussion covers parts 6, 7, and 8 of Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. Anna's unhappy ending: Look how they massacred my girl. Is this a…
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Anna Karenina part 2: I am begging you to touch grass
Full transcript available at doyouevenlit.com — sort all our episodes by ideas, authors, and more. Levin is a turbo nerd who runs away from social awkwardness to theorise on agrarian economics or whatever. Sound like anyone you know?? Anyway he finally touches grass and gets the girl. Meanwhile…
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Tolstoy's Anna Karenina: Real Housewives of Russia
Benny decided it was time for the boys to read Leo Tolstoy's 800 page whopper Anna Karenina. Today we discuss parts 1 and 2 of the novel. Rich immediately fell in love with all the characters. He wants be Levin, be with Anna, and be... something with that majestic horse Frou Frou. On the famous...
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One Hundred Years of Solitude: The optimal amount of incest is non-zero
Everyone loves Gabriel García Márquez' 1967 genre-defining classic One Hundred Years of Solitude. At first we were charmed. But after trying to track a complex web of births and deaths and affairs and inc*stuous unions all taking place in the first 100 pages we found ourselves mired deep in the...
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Everything is Illuminated: Cultural Learnings of Trachimbrod for Make Benefit Glorious Book Club
we have very premium episode for you this week. welcoming special guest Nicole (@elocinationn), one of the great up-and-coming poasters of our time. We revisit one of her younger self's favourite books, Jonathan Safran Foer's ambitious 2002 novel Everything is Illuminated. On being disconnected...
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Truth of Fact, Truth of Fiction: Is Ted Chiang a Luddite?
This week we tackle another short story by Ted Chiang: From his 2019 Exhalation collection Truth of Fact, Truth of Feeling. Luddism and cognitive tool breakthroughs: we go through the pros and cons. Rich wants to go to the moon. We're not sure how much of a luddite, or dare we say relativist, we...
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The Dispossessed part 2: Why would capitalism make me do this?
This week we wrap up our discussion of Ursula LeGuin's 1974 classic The Dispossessed. Simultaneity physics: just a mcguffin, or deeper thematic significance? How is it different to a block universe? Does this count as hard sci-fi? on the [redacted] scene: why would LeGuin include this? how are we...
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Ursula Le Guin's The Dispossessed: Real anarchy has never been tried
A brilliant physicist grows disenchanted with the stifling anarchist society of his home planet, defecting to a capitalist world in the hopes of finding true freedom...but what he finds only horrifies him. Cam says Ursula K. Le Guin's 1974 award-winning piece of sociological fiction is a leftist...
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DeLillo's White Noise: psy-opping ourselves on death and po-mo
“All plots tend to move deathward. This is the nature of plots.” After a break, the boys jump into the 1980s po-mo White Noise by Don DeLillo. We talk about the denial of death, toxic airborne events, and Baudrillardian copies of copies of copies (of copies...) Simulacra: The boys shake off their...
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The Odyssey, part 2: Failsons and deadbeat dads
This week we finally shut up about translations and get into some juicy themes and character analysis. Telemachus: why is he such a dweeb compared to his dad? Rich argues that he's doing the best he can growing up with an absent father. The others are less sympathetic. Odysseus: is his paranoid...
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Emily Wilson's The Odyssey, part 1: Bronze age perversion
Full transcript available at doyouevenlit.com — sort all our episodes by ideas, authors, and more. WOKE classics professor DESTROYED by three random guys who've never read homer before!!! just kidding we love it. Wilson translation discourse: is she really importing her feminist beliefs into the...
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Nikolai Gogol: Cutting your nose to spite the faceless bureaucracy
"For how could the nose, which had been on his face but yesterday, and able then neither to drive nor to walk independently, now be going about in uniform?" We take a break from reading novels and take a quick nose dive into Gogol's famous 1830s short story, talking absurdity, bureaucracy, and...
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Blood Meridian, part 2: It's time for some game theory
"He never sleeps, the judge. He is dancing, dancing. He says that he will never die." Wrapping up the second half of our discussion on Cormac McCarthy's 1985 classic, in which various chickens come home to roost. The Glanton gang's downfall: on the run from the Sonoran cavalry, mercy killings,...
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Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, part 1: A legion of horribles
Full transcript available at doyouevenlit.com — sort all our episodes by ideas, authors, and more. Hell aint half full. Hear me. Ye carry war of a madman's making onto a foreign land. Yell wake more than the dogs. Rich is a big McCarthy head. For Benny and Cam, it's their first taste, and we're...
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DYEL Christmas party: The most beloved and hated books of 2024
A bit of festive fun looking back on the year that was. Which books have stayed with us? Which were forgettable? What was the best reading/watching we did outside of book club? What did we learn about podcasting? Are we gonna keep posting this stuff in public? and MORE CHAPTERS (00:00:00) festive...
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The Moviegoer: In which we escape a deep existential malaise
A paradox: how can an author—say, Walker Percy—get the reader to care about a protagonist—say, Binx Bolling—who is stuck in a malaise and doesn't himself particularly care about anything? A corollary: how can a book club have an engaging discussion when they don't particularly care about said…
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Banned books: Vladimir Nabokov's infamous Lolita
“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul... You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.” Nabokov had a lot of trouble getting anyone to publish a story about a grown man falling in love with a 12 year old. After multiple bans and scandals, Lolita caught fire in...
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Karl Ove Knausgaard's My Struggle: Autofiction and autofellation
These days every bestselling author writes novels about how their dad was too strict and they got bullied for bringing stinky indian food to school etc. But Karl Ove Knausgaard walked so millennial narcissists could run. This week we get absorbed in part 1 of his epic six-part autobiographical...
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Ted Chiang's Understand: Intelligence explosions and AI doom
Yeah, it's big brain time. This week we're reading 'Understand' from Ted Chiang's 2002 collection Stories of Your Life and Others. what is the ceiling on human intelligence? can we jooce it up? did Chiang inspire the whole AI doomer movement? would superintelligence beings have to annihilate each...
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Chekhov urself before u wreck-ov urself (The Little Trilogy)
This week we're reading three of Anton Chekhov's most beloved short stories: The Man in the Case, Gooseberries, and About Love (The Little Trilogy, 1898). We get a minor assist from George Saunders and his fantastic book A Swim in the Pond in the Rain but have no shortage of stuff to discuss....
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Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms: War and love
Hemingway's 1929 semi-autobiographical classic tackles two big timeless themes: love and war. Two out of three of us can relate to the first one, but war feels pretty alien to us. How would the boys do if they were conscripted? What made WWI so uniquely dispiriting? What is it about this novel…
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
stemcel tragics use THE POWER OF FRIENDSHIP to read literary classics
HOSTED BY
cam and benny feat. rich
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How many episodes does Do You Even Lit? have?
Do You Even Lit? currently has 74 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
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stemcel tragics use THE POWER OF FRIENDSHIP to read literary classics
How often does Do You Even Lit? release new episodes?
Do You Even Lit? has 74 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
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Who hosts Do You Even Lit??
Do You Even Lit? is created and hosted by cam and benny feat. rich.
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