A critical book club from the Ancillary Review of Books. Host Jake Casella Brookins invites writers, scholars, and critics to discuss thorny works of science fiction, fantasy, and other speculative genres.
A Meal of Thorns
Claim This Podcastby The Ancillary Review of Books
5.0(45 reviews)
52 episodes
Updated Weekly
Accepts GuestsHas SponsorsLocation 🇺🇸
58
Podcast Authority
BetaFairBased on show quality, social media presence, reviews, charts, and more
Quality81
Social0
YouTube0
Engagement85
Podcast Overview
A critical book club from the Ancillary Review of Books. Host Jake Casella Brookins invites writers, scholars, and critics to discuss thorny works of science fiction, fantasy, and other speculative genres.
Language
🇺🇲
Publishing Since
7/1/2024
Unlock The Full Podcast Authority Score Report
See how your podcast performs across key metrics
58
Podcast Authority
BetaFairBased on show quality, social media presence, reviews, charts, and more
Quality81
Social0
YouTube0
Engagement85
8
Excellent Areas
2
Good Performance
9
Growth Opportunities
excellent
Episode Length
1h 8m
Performing excellently!
good
Publishing Consistency
Every 14 days
Recommendations available
Unlock the full report to see detailed tips
poor
Episode Thumbnails
Recommendations available
Unlock the full report to see detailed tips
+16 More Metrics
Unlock comprehensive insights including:
- • YouTube presence analysis
- • Social media reach metrics
- • RSS compliance scoring
- • Podcast 2.0 features
- • Technical standards
What's Included in Your Full Report
Detailed Analytics
- Complete breakdown of all 19 authority metrics
- Personalized recommendations for each metric
- Industry benchmarks and comparisons
- Technical RSS feed analysis and compliance scoring
Growth Strategies
- Step-by-step action plans for improvement
- Quick wins to boost your score immediately
- Pro tips from successful podcasters
Get your free podcast insights report
See how your show performs across every key metric
Instant delivery
No spam
Attract Better Guests
High authority scores make your podcast more attractive to industry leaders and influencers who want to appear on credible shows.
Secure Sponsorships
Sponsors look for podcasts with proven authority and engagement. Your score demonstrates your podcast's value to potential partners.
Grow Your Audience
Understanding your strengths and weaknesses helps you make data-driven decisions to expand your listener base effectively.
1 verified contact email on file for A Meal of Thorns
Pitch yourself as a guest, propose sponsorships, or reach out directly to the host.
Recent Episodes
June 15, 2026
A Meal of Thorns 52- STAND ON ZANZIBAR with Dan Hartland
Brunner’s prescient classic about overpopulation: is it about overpopulation? Was it prescient? And, for that matter: what does it mean to be a classic? Reviewer and editor Dan Hartland joins to discuss these questions and more. Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books. Please consider supporting ARB’s Patreon! Guest: Dan Hartland Title: Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner Host:Jake Casella Brookins Music byGiselle Gabrielle Garcia Artwork byRob Patterson Opening poem by Bhartṛhari, translated by John Brough References: Strange Horizon’s 2026 fund-drive Strange Horizons’ Critical Friends podcast The Illuminated Man: Life, Death and the Worlds of J.G. Ballard by Christopher Priest and Nina Allan Prism, Plastic, Void by Violet Allen This Is How You Lose The Time War by Max Gladstone & Amal El-Mohtar Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir We The Parasites by A.V. Marraccini Robert Jackson Bennett’s A Trade of Blood, Mr. Shivers, and Divine Cities trilogy Orion’s “SF Masterworks” series Alfred Bester’s The Stars My Destination Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War The Club Of Rome’s report “The Limits to Growth” Brunner’s “Club or Rome Quartet”: Stand on Zanzibar, The Sheep Look Up, Shockwave Rider, Jagged Orbit John Dos Passos’s U.S.A. trilogy New Worlds magazine "New Wave" science fiction Timothy Leary The Beatles’ Please Please Me versus Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band Jad Smith’s John Brunner Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.’s The Sirens of Titan & Cat's Cradle William Gibson, Kim Stanley Robinson Thomas Disch's 334 & Camp Concentration The Population Bomb by Paul R. Ehrlich & Anne Howland Ehrlich Soylent Green, dir. Richard Fleischer Make Room! Make Room! by Harry Harrison Gibson’s “Johnny Mnemonic” Vajra Chandrasekera China Mountain Zhang by Maureen F. McHugh Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein Network, dir. Sidney Lumet Marshall McLuhan Taylor Sheridan & John Linson’s Yellowstone series Transmetropolitan comic series by Warren Ellis, Darick Robertson et al. Going Rogue podcast Warren Ellis sexual coercion allegations; lots more but here’s an early overview from the Guardian “FogHorn Barge” from Daniel Simon @ SoundBible, CC BY 3.0 James Ellroy's The Cold Six Thousand David Runciman’s “Are we doomed?” for LRB Degrowth KSR’s The Ministry for the Future E.J. Swift’s When There Are Wolves Again Strange Horizons’ “Ageing in Science Fiction” special issue Shintaro Kago’s Dementia 21 Julia Armfield’s Private Rites Jacqueline Nyathi’s Harare Review of Books David Brin's Earth Jerry Pournelle Dan's Bluesky The Clarke shortlist discussion will appear on Nerds of a Feather Tenacious D The Long Winters The Science Fiction Research Association (SFRA)
June 1, 2026
A Meal of Thorns 51- THE FIFTH HEAD OF CERBERUS with Premee Mohamed
Science fiction readers love a mechanism, they love a bit of world-building and mystery-solving. Premee Mohamed joins us to discuss Gene Wolfe's The Fifth Head of Cerberus, a book that asks: what if a science fiction book intentionally avoided all of that? Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books. Please consider supporting ARB’s Patreon! Guest: Premee Mohamed Title: The Fifth Head of Cerberus by Gene Wolfe Host:Jake Casella Brookins Music byGiselle Gabrielle Garcia Artwork byRob Patterson Opening poem by Bhartṛhari, translated by John Brough References: Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake Moby-Dick by Herman Melville Mercutio by Kate Heartfield Pretenders to the Throne of God by Adrian Tchaikovsky Orbit 10 anthology edited by Damon Knight William Carlos Williams’ “This Is Just To Say” and its many responses Premee’s And What Can We Offer You Tonight Meander, Spiral, Explode by Jane Alison Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon Heart of Darkness by Josef Conrad The Vorrh by B. Catling The face dancers from Frank Herbert’s Dune series Mystique and the Kree from the Marvel/X-Men comics Michael Swanwick's Stations of the Tide Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire Premee’s The Butcher of the Forest & Wickhills "sentients" & "sapients" “The Great Chain of Being” Star Wars series The Bad Batch and The Clone Wars Orson Scott Card's Speaker for the Dead Octavia Butler's Dawn Tolkien's On Fairy Stories Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? & Ridley Scott's Bladerunner Premee’s The Siege of Burning Grass Hilary Putnam's “Twin Earth” Premee's Patreon, Website, Bluesky Wickhills & From the Library of Jurgen Leitner The Carl Brandon Society
May 18, 2026
A Meal of Thorns 50- SISYPHEAN with Gareth Watkins
A rain of corpses is falling from the sky, insectoid femme fatales are setting their compound eyes on our tender thoraxes, and our cattle drive across an expanse of nanotech goo is starting to go off the rails. So we ask ourselves: do we still have to go to work tomorrow? Critic, author, & podcaster Gareth Watkins joins to discuss Dempow Torishima’s delightfully strange Sisyphean. Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books. Please consider supporting ARB’s Patreon! Guest: Gareth Watkins Title: Sisyphean by Dempow Torishima, translated by Daniel Huddleston Host: Jake Casella Brookins Music by Giselle Gabrielle Garcia Artwork by Rob Patterson Opening poem by Bhartṛhari, translated by John Brough References: Death // Sentence Muskism by Quinn Slobodian & Ben Tarnoff Peter Thiel One Piece by Eiichiro Oda Slavoj Žižek René Girard Carl Schmitt Thiel/Douthat NYT interview Jeff VanderMeer Haikosoru Viz Comics Battle Royale by Koushun Takami Finnegans Wake by James Joyce The Doloriad by Missouri Williams M. John Harrison’s essay on worldbuilding Marmite/Vegemite Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel "Professor Jiang" Isaac Asimov's Foundation New Chronology Tartarianism Franz Kafka & Philip K. Dick A Scanner Darkly H.R. Giger Phil Tippet’s Mad God Kameron Hurley's The Stars are Legion Antoine Volodine's Radiant Terminus Manuela Draeger's Kree Mike Judge’s Office Space David Cronenberg Raymond Chandler Antonio Gramsci Nick Land Friedrich Nietzsche's eternal recurrence Yoss's Planet for Rent Deleuze & Guitarri The Sex Pistols & Avril Lavigne H.P. Lovecraft's "The Call of Cthulhu" Ayn Rand Jeff VanderMeer's Dead Astronauts Torishima's Kanadete no Nufuretsun Gareth's bluesky Just Plain Evil: Cruelty, Extinction, and the Authoritarian Mind Gareth's appearances on Blood Work
52 total episodes available
Recent guests on A Meal of Thorns
Guests from recent episodes — sign up to see every guest that has ever appeared on this show.
Arkady Martine
Guest
André M Carrington
Guest
Roseanna Pendlebury
Guest
Similar Podcasts
Discover related shows you might enjoy
Just King Things
Ranged Touch
Shelved By Genre
Ranged Touch
Side Story
Friends at the Table
Octothorpe
John Coxon, Alison Scott, Liz Batty
Friends at the Table
Friends at the Table
Remap Radio
Remap Radio
A More Civilized Age: A Star Wars Podcast
A More Civilized Age
Citations Needed
Nima Shirazi and Adam Johnson
Tech Won't Save Us
Paris Marx
Chapo Trap House
Chapo Trap House
The Coode Street Podcast
Jonathan Strahan & Gary K. Wolfe
Going Rogue
Tansy Gardam
SFUltra
Sean McTiernan
The Film Comment Podcast
Film Comment Magazine
TrueAnon
TrueAnon
Deep-dive analytics for A Meal of Thorns
Frequently asked questions
Have a different question and can't find the answer you're looking for? Reach out to our support team by sending us an email and we'll get back to you as soon as we can.
- What is A Meal of Thorns?
- How often does this podcast release new episodes?
This podcast updates weekly.
- Where can I listen to this podcast?
This podcast is available on 2 platforms including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and more. You can also use the RSS feed directly.
- Does this podcast accept guests?
Yes, this podcast regularly features guests.
Legal Disclaimer
Pod Engine is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or officially connected with any of the podcasts displayed on this platform. We operate independently as a podcast discovery and analytics service.
All podcast artwork, thumbnails, and content displayed on this page are the property of their respective owners and are protected by applicable copyright laws. This includes, but is not limited to, podcast cover art, episode artwork, show descriptions, episode titles, transcripts, audio snippets, and any other content originating from the podcast creators or their licensors.
We display this content under fair use principles and/or implied license for the purpose of podcast discovery, information, and commentary. We make no claim of ownership over any podcast content, artwork, or related materials shown on this platform. All trademarks, service marks, and trade names are the property of their respective owners.
While we strive to ensure all content usage is properly authorized, if you are a rights holder and believe your content is being used inappropriately or without proper authorization, please contact us immediately at hey@podengine.ai for prompt review and appropriate action, which may include content removal or proper attribution.
By accessing and using this platform, you acknowledge and agree to respect all applicable copyright laws and intellectual property rights of content owners. Any unauthorized reproduction, distribution, or commercial use of the content displayed on this platform is strictly prohibited.