Foundress Of Nothing

Death scenes felt safely abstract when we started making plans for this episode. Cancer crashed in, and Jen's Dad died weeks later. We return to talking about Middlemarch from the other side of loss.

Links to stuff we mentioned:   Jen’s 12/6/16 piece “Akio Takamori's Drawings and Sculptures of Men Apologizing”   Nikole Hannah-Jones' brilliant This American Life episode about the persistence of school segregation and a district that accidentally desegregated: “The Problem We All Live With.”   Jen got an email about “opportunity hoarding” and a book called Despite the Best Intentions: How Racial Inequality Thrives in Good Schools   And of course ... Middlemarch, which is available for money wherever books and audiobooks are sold for money as well as for free via Project Gutenberg for text and Librivox for audio.

In which we use "In which ..." to begin an episode description for the last time. We also discuss whether George Eliot should have to be in a room with Donald Trump and why it's maybe a good thing to treat Middlemarch like a snack food.

In which we misremember our vow to never again do an episode longer than 27 minutes as a vow to never again do an episode longer than 28 minutes.

In which we find a title for the podcast by scouring the early chapters of Middlemarch for phrases to steal, and we vow never to make any future episodes longer than 27 minutes.