China's First Poem
This week, Rob and Lee go back to the very first poem in all of Chinese literature. The first poem in the Classic of Poetry, "Guan, Guan Goes the Osprey" has been interpreted and reinterpreted so much...
9 Okt 202115min
Does Chinese Culture Dampen its Nobel Prospects?
Today, Rob and Lee change the format and have a debate about China and innovation, with Rob defending China and Lee arguing that there is something in Chinese culture that does not value innovation. L...
2 Okt 202122min
End of the Journey
This week, we take our final look at the Journey to the West, fast-forwarding all the way to the end. Today, we will look at the last three chapters of the novel, Chapters 98-100, thinking about how t...
25 Sep 202122min
Princess Iron Fan
Part 5 in our Journey to the West Series, Rob and Lee take a look at Chapters 59-61, one of the most important fights in the book. In these chapters, Monkey struggles to take the fan from the aptly na...
18 Sep 202120min
The Maram Epstein Methodology
11 Sep 202119min
Journey To the West Characters
In this third part of the series on Journey to the West, Rob and Lee discuss the characters in the novel other than Monkey (but they still end up mostly talking about Monkey...he is just that much fun...
4 Sep 202121min
Enter the Monkey King
By far the most well-known part of Journey to the West is the first 7 chapters. A quasi-divine monkey figures out how to get nearly limitless power, has a whole lot of fun with it, then starts a war w...
28 Aug 202121min
Journey to the West Series - Episode 1
Today, we begin our series on on of the most influential novels in the history or China, really in the history of Asia. Today, we begin the Journey of the Journey by contextualizing the novel.
21 Aug 202118min
