Subtext: Conversations about Classic Books and Films
A podcast by Wes Alwan and Erin O'Luanaigh - Mondays

128 Episodes
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Competing Affections in “The Lion in Winter”
Published: 31/07/2023 -
Friendship and Honor in “Becket” (1964)
Published: 03/07/2023 -
Losing Your Head in Alice Munro’s “Carried Away”
Published: 05/06/2023 -
Time and Taboo in “Back to the Future” (1985)
Published: 16/05/2023 -
The Violence of Redemption in John Donne’s “Batter My Heart” (Holy Sonnet 14)
Published: 10/04/2023 -
Mortal Pretensions in John Donne’s “Death Be Not Proud” (Holy Sonnet 10)
Published: 13/03/2023 -
Trauma and Repetition in Roman Polanski’s “Chinatown” (1974)
Published: 13/02/2023 -
Better and Bested in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”
Published: 16/01/2023 -
Pagan Poetics in “Sunday Morning” by Wallace Stevens
Published: 19/12/2022 -
Production for Use in “His Girl Friday”
Published: 21/11/2022 -
Post-Doctoral Bedevilment in Christopher Marlowe’s “Dr. Faustus”
Published: 24/10/2022 -
Fate and Blame in “Long Day’s Journey into Night”
Published: 26/09/2022 -
Work as Madness in “The Bridge on the River Kwai” (1957)
Published: 09/05/2022 -
What Falls Upon the Living in James Joyce’s “The Dead”
Published: 11/04/2022 -
Finding Home in Stephen Spielberg’s “E.T.” (1982)
Published: 14/03/2022 -
The Power of Calm: Two Wordsworth Sonnets
Published: 28/02/2022 -
What Nature Betrays: Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey” (Part 2)
Published: 14/02/2022 -
Mother Nature’s Nurture in Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey” (Part 1)
Published: 31/01/2022 -
The Fool Gets Hurt in Fellini’s “La Strada” (1954)
Published: 17/01/2022 -
False Roles and Fictitious Selves in “The Awakening” by Kate Chopin
Published: 03/01/2022
Subtext is a book club podcast for readers interested in what the greatest works of the human imagination say about life’s big questions. Each episode, philosopher Wes Alwan and poet Erin O’Luanaigh conduct a close reading of a text or film and co-write an audio essay about it in real time. It’s literary analysis, but in the best sense: we try not overly stuffy and pedantic, but rather focus on unearthing what’s most compelling about great books and movies, and how it is they can touch our lives in such a significant way.