Swan Lake

Sylvie & Dora

What’s in a name? Sylvie and (Isa)dora tell you. Sylvie watches “Sylvie”, a 1973 German TV film about a doomed romance between a cab-driver-cum-sailor and a model, and Dora watches “Isadora, The Biggest Dancer in the World”, Ken Russell’s tribute to the Mother of Modern Dance. Following in the footsteps of their namesakes, Sylvie and Dora skip, twirl and leap through rival manifestos by German filmmakers, a Nietzschean theory of dance, an ashram brought down by a beautiful secretary, and the unjust treatment of aging female eccentrics. P.s. Sorry from the bottom of our hearts for the intermittent mic interference. We still don’t fully understand how to use the mics.

X-Rated and Illustrated

A lanky provocateur, a pencil, and an Amazonian objet d'art who might snap her creator in half like one. A winning formula unites Robert Crumb’s incendiary cartoons and Namio Harukawa’s monomaniacal smut. Lost in the badlands of X-rated illustration, Sylvie and Dora argue about who is more callipygian, historicise erotica and battle the beautiful fighting girl, denizen of the girlish abyss.

Easter Islands

Two islands, both alike in Easter. Sylvie and Dora stand before the faces of the chiefs at Easter Island and are chased by rabbits at Ōkunoshima, Japan’s viral Rabbit Island. Hunting for eggs, they turn up Édouard Glissant’s archipelago, kawaii, an island molestation scandal and a rabbit costume incest allegory. Many thanks to Abigail Morris for the visualisation exclusive <3

Confidential

This episode is strictly confidential. Jeffrey Epstein’s little black book meets Peter Thiel’s 2004 essay ‘The Straussian Moment’ at an undisclosed location. Sylvie and Dora pick over a heap of discarded documents. Among the detritus they find the scapegoat, the Antichrist and the Man from O.R.G.Y. All will be revealed in this, our 19th episode.

Swan Lake

A pas de deux, a podcast. Upon the lake of tears sit Oskar Schlemmer’s Triadisches Ballet, an experimental dancework conceived in pre-war Germany, and Truman Capote’s Swans, a group of high society women he befriended and betrayed. Pageantry, sorcery, Nazi characterology and robot ballerinas float by as Sylvie and Dora discuss what it means to be a swan. This episode's visualisation was donated by the renowned Biz Sherbert, whose generosity knows no bounds.