Episodes
All episodes of Do You Even Lit.
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66. Raymond Carver: Cathedrals even for those without eyes to see
Is the narrator really transformed by drawing the cathedral, or is this just an over-interpreted moment in American fiction? On sincerity, empathy, and seeing other people.
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65. Walking away from 'The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas'
Rich remembered this being a glorified trolley problem that would allow us to settle the question of 'who is the most utilitarian-brained of us all' — but it's not. It's about politics, capitalism, and bold utopian leaps.
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64. American Pastoral, part 2: The Indigenous American Berserk
Roth vs Dostoevsky, in praise of blue-haired activist types, and the problem of assimilation.
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63. American Pastoral, part 1: Baby's First Lit Fic
Football star. Marine. Marries a beauty queen. Inherits dad's glove factory. Loves his daughter unconditionally. Then his precious little girl blows up the local post office and kills a man.
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62. Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde: Thank God for Incognito Mode
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.
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61. 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?
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60. Was the sexual revolution a mistake? (Houellebecq's Atomised, part 1)
Are inceldom and looksmaxxing the inevitable consequences of the intrusion of market forces into every facet of human society? If Clavicular did not exist, would it be necessary to invent him?
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59. Stefan Zweig's The Royal Game: What's the ultimate desert island book?
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 chess, and whether we should pressure our kids to become pro athletes/chess prodigies/concert pianists.
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58. Moby Dick finale: Ahab Derangement Syndrome
On Melville's egalitarian dream, Ahab as demagogue, why the crew don't mutiny, parallels to the current political moment, and Latin America as a cautionary tale.
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57. Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein: Look how they massacred my boy
On the dumbing-down of nuanced morality stories, and the ubiquity of daddy issues and therapy speak in modern media. Can't a guy just be a crazy hubristic scientist anymore?
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56. Moby Dick, part 2: A conceptual analysis of Whiteness
On the deeper significance of making the whale white, nihilism and meaning-making, the terrifying vastness of the ocean, animal welfare and charismatic megafauna.
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55. Moby Dick, part 1: My name is Ishmael and my special interest is whales
Dissecting the iconic opening line, the precise nature of Ishmael's relationship with our fellow New Zealand native Queequeg, and the question of race and class politics onboard a whaling ship.
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54. 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.
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53. DYEL wrapped: Most beloved and hated books of 2025
Some festive chit-chat and navel-gazing on the year that was.
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52. Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow: It's not rocket science
Clumsy virginal fumblings as the boys attempt to decipher the first 100 pages. A shameful and frankly demoralising experience. Does it get easier? Please dear god let it get easier.
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51. Murakami's Norwegian Wood: the sadboi and his manic pixie dream girls
The author-insert protagonist is transported back to his college days, breaking free of ennui and depression just long enough to sleep with a string of hot but crazy chicks (and giving each of them the greatest sexual experience of their life).
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50. A Portrait of the Artist: James Joyce on the difference between tasteful nudes and porn
Moments of adolescent significance: heated dinner-time conversations, a child's keen sense of injustice, the fear of Hellfire, contemplating eternity, sexual guilt, and teenage rebellion. Which did we relate to the most?
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49. C.P. Snow's The Two Cultures: the original stemcels vs shape rotators beef
Why do literary types tend to be Luddites? Is it kinda good that hubristic tech bros refuse to read the classics? Has the gap narrowed or widened in recent decades?
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48. Butcher's Crossing: John Williams's rougher cut
Not as good as Stoner — but is anything? An anti-Western about a Harvard transcendentalist who heads west to slaughter buffalo and find himself.
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47. Borges's Library of Babel: Ctrl + F for meaning
The boys put down the heavy tomes for a short story — well, maybe a thought experiment. A meditation on infinity (or almost-might-as-well-be infinity). There are a lot of books.
