Resistance Reads

Resistance Reads Podcast E20 Lovecraft Country

What happens when you take H.P. Lovecraft's cosmic horror and hand it to the people he feared most? In Matt Ruff's Lovecraft Country, the real monsters aren't lurking in ancient tomes or sunken cities. They're wearing badges, drawing red lines on maps, and deciding who gets to exist in public after dark. In this episode, Michael Kilman and Matt Wellstrom dig into Matt Ruff's genre-bending novel set in 1950s Jim Crow America, where a Black Korean War veteran and his family navigate sundown towns, racist hauntings, shape-shifting elixirs, and a white occultist with questionable motives, all while facing horrors that don't need magic to be terrifying. We explore: * Why H.P. Lovecraft's cosmic dread actually maps more accurately onto the Black experience than onto his own * How each chapter uses supernatural horror as an allegory for real Jim Crow era injustices including redlining, minstrelsy, and white allyship with strings attached * The question of whether a white author can write the Black experience with integrity, and what Matt Ruff does right * Why neutrality is power, and what Ruby's time as a white woman reveals about race, attractiveness, and privilege * How the monsters in this book never kill a single Black character Also featuring tangents on Stephen King, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the Colorado Constitution written in three languages, and why racism is always the real monster. Next episode: Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light Resistance Reads is a podcast exploring literature, power, and resistance through a social science lens. Hosted by Michael Kilman (Anthropology) and Matt Wellstrom (Political Science).

Resistance Reads Podcast E19 Paradise Lost

Matt and Michael dig into John Milton's Paradise Lost, the 17th-century epic poem that tells the story of the Fall from Satan's perspective. They explore why Satan reads as the tragic hero, how Milton's own political defeats and blindness shaped the work, the structural impossibility of free will in a world with an omniscient God, and why Eve gets a far more sympathetic treatment here than in almost any other retelling of the Eden story. The conversation moves into the Lilith midrash, the historical roots of Satan as a concept, and how the Jewish experience of oppression shaped the God of the Torah. They close with the Denver Gay Revolt as a model of effective resistance, and what Milton's Satan can teach us about working inside a broken system rather than just protesting outside it. Next up: Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff.

Resistance Reads E18 A Gentleman in Moscow

Matt and Michael dig into Amor Towles' A Gentleman in Moscow, the story of Count Alexander Rostov, an aristocrat placed under house arrest in a five-star Moscow hotel for thirty years. What does it mean to keep your greatest qualities when everything else has been stripped away? They explore the Count's resistance through community and craft rather than power, the extraction logic baked into both capitalism and communism, the tragedy of true believers like Mishka, and why the Bishop is the most recognizable villain in the book. Plus: Napoleon burning Moscow, redundancy versus efficiency as civilizational philosophy, and why the bread was better in Berlin. Next episode: Paradise Lost by John Milton.

Resistance Reads Podcast E17 Let the Right One In

What does it mean to exist outside every category society offers? Michael Kilman and Matt Wellstrom explore Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist through an anthropological lens, examining isolation, otherness, gender identity, and what vampires tell us about capitalism and nationalism. Featuring the theory of Mary Douglas, and a discussion of bullies as conservative enforcers of social norms. Next episode: A Gentleman in Moscow.

Resistance Reads Podcast E16 Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut's Mother Night follows an American playwright who becomes one of the most effective Nazi propagandists of World War II — while secretly working as an American spy. But here's the question the book forces you to sit with: does the spying matter if the propaganda worked? Michael Kilman and Matt Wellstrom explore the psychology of propaganda, the Nuremberg trials, why satire fails against fascism, the relationship between art and political resistance, and what Vonnegut's darkest novel has to say about the world right now. You are what you pretend to be. So what does that mean when what you're pretending to be is a Nazi? 🎧 Listen wherever you get your podcasts or at https://loridianslaboratory.podbean.com/ [https://loridianslaboratory.podbean.com/] 📺 Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ResistanceReadsPodcast [https://www.youtube.com/@ResistanceReadsPodcast] 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/resistancereadspodcast/ [https://www.instagram.com/resistancereadspodcast/]