The Red Scare

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I think I would just say as, you know, this is my armchair, like historical read on the situation. And maybe I think the red scare might reflect a little bit of that too. But again, if you approach it uncritically, you can get caught up in doing a bunch of stuff that is kind of pointless without even really realizing it because it's what you consider to be normal. It's telling to me that you have not said that this story has like a central character or there's like one guy who came up with the box or anything. That person has long since been lost to history. The ones that don't do it are considered by many of their peers

We double-dip a bit in this week's show, reading two short stories and proving that you don't have to have a ton of time to read something thought-provoking. The theme is "female authors writing about controversial-at-the-time ideas," and the stories are The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and The Lottery by Shirley Jackson.

One is about a misdiagnosed "hysterical" woman slowly going insane through lack of mental stimulation, one is about a seemingly innocuous small town that is slavishly devoted to its own traditions. Both remain subversive and retain their impact even today.

Oh yeah and we also talk about which grocery store animal mascot would win in a fight.

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