Slow Learners

About Slow Learners

A podcast about big books. Season One is devoted to a reading an analysis of Thomas Pynchon's 1973 novel "Gravity's Rainbow," and other issues directly related to the text.

Publisher

Asher Dark + John Semley

Category

arts

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

17 Oct 2023

Latest episode

18 Dec 2025

Latest episodes

25 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   18 Dec 2025

   VINELAND EP 6/7: Voicemails

   We clear out the voicemail machine. Included: Proustian Failure, One Battle After Another, Bungled Anarchist Theory, Joyce Comparisons, Dante and His Divine Three-Volume Series, Japanese Cadences; Is Fiction Just, Like, Autobiography, Man?; Pynchonian Media, Montreal, AND AS USUAL LOTS MORE!!!!!!

2. 

   6 Nov 2025

   VINELAND EP 6: Vineland The Good?

   We are back. Sorry for the delay--we were just uh...savoring the book's ending, and the richness of the text. John and Asher ride solo...together. Like DL and Takeshi! In our final Vineland read-through, we cover the book's last three chapters, learn more about Brock Vond's sexual proclivities, witness, the birth of Prairie, get the scoop on Zoyd's whole window-smashing-deal, return to Vineland itself for the Traverse-Becker family reunion, learn the fate of all our characters, and meet like 17 more. We also discuss myths of the afterlife, theories of hereditary madness (courtesy Italian phrenologists), giggling, acid versus coke rock, acid versus coke books, the ontology of the Pynchonverse, the (over)abundance agenda, if Sleep is the same band as Electric Wizard, Sylvia Plath, Proust (natch!), something-other-than-pessimism, the symbolism of blue jays, if hope is evil, and the impossibility of tilting the beam. Thanks for listening! We'll be back soon! And remember... SUNSHINE DAYDREAM SUNSHINE DAYDREAM SUNSHINE DAYDREAM SUNSHINE DAYDREAM SUNSHINE DAYDREAM SUNSHINE DAYDREAM SUNSHINE DAYDREAM SUNSHINE DAYDREAM Music In This Episode: Wendy Watson - "Degrassi Jr. High Theme" (excerpt) Sleep - "Dragonaut" (excerpt) Pop o' Pies - "Sugar Magnolia" (Demo Tape Version) (edited) Other Stuff: "Daddy" (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48999/daddy-56d22aafa45b2) by Sylvia Plath "Proverbs for Paranoids" (https://www.gravitysrainbowguide.com/)Gravity's Rainbow Guide

3. 

   23 Oct 2025

   VINELAND EP 5: It's The Libidinal Economy, Stupid! (W/Subliminal Jihad)

   THIS WEEK: John and Asher reads through Chapters 10-12 of Vineland, which takes them back in their shared semester at the College of the Surf (John was Asher's RA). We also learn about the scintillating backstory of Frenesi Gates and her love affair with a COP (ew)--the betrayal of all her ostensible values. We also talk Marx, Freud, Lyotard, Thorazine as a bad-trip-killer, cinematic radicalism, the horny monster who lives inside of you and makes you do stuff you shouldn't want to (or even don't want to) do, May '68, the Emerald Triangle, and the Pynchonian figure of the evil dentist. THEN: Asher is joined by Dimitri and Khalid of the Subliminal Jihad podcast (https://www.patreon.com/cw/subliminaljihad) to talk about Pynchon's ties (literary and otherwise) to deep state conspiracism, occult machinations, and all things para-political (or as the boys would say it: political). The truth is out there? WRONG AGAIN. The truth is in...here. MUSIC: Kimi-Bogdan Raczynski

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

4.5 / 5

54 ratings

Spotify

4.9 / 5

83 ratings

Contact Slow Learners

Guest appearances

Does not typically book guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.

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