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  • Met Him Pike Hoses

    To listen to a discussion of this topic, check out the podcast episode here. “– O rocks! she said. Tell us in plain words.”  While Stephen Dedalus and Buck Mulligan were sniping at each other over breakfast on June 16, Leopold and Molly Bloom were discussing the idea of metempsychosis (better known as reincarnation) over…

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  • Ep. 40 – Boul’ Mich’

    Bon soir, mes amis, et bienvenue a Blooms et Barnacles! Kelly and Dermot discuss Joyce’s disastrous sojourn to Paris as a youth and its parallels to Stephen Dedalus’ recollections of his time in Paris. Discussion topics include the fin de siècle fashion of French symbolist poets, what exactly mou en civet is, Stephen feeling down…

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  • In the Jakes with Mr. Bloom

    “The life of [Ulysses] comes first and the philosophy afterwards. Obscenity is a question of manners and conventions for ever changing. Virtuosity, if it stood alone, would soon become demoded, and philosophy too, but living character stays through whatever material is presented.” – Frank Budgen “Professor Bloom is a finished example of the new womanly…

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  • Ep. 39 – C’est le pigeon, Joseph.

    Stephen Dedalus learns the value of gentlemanly blasphemy in this episode of Blooms & Barnacles. Our hero evades the nets of his oppressors while recalling a conversation with a friend in Paris. Topics include the changing face of Ringsend, the Pigeonhouse, Stephen’s epiphanies and the Epiphany, Dermot speaking French, what Jules Michelet doesn’t know about…

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  • Agendath Netaim

    To listen to a discussion of this topic, check out the podcast episode here. “He took a page up from the pile of cut sheets: the model farm at Kinnereth on the lakeshore of Tiberias. Can become ideal winter sanatorium. Moses Montefiore. I thought he was. Farmhouse, wall round it, blurred cattle cropping. He held…

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  • Ep. 38 – Pico della Mirandola like.

    This episode of Blooms & Barnacles takes an esoteric twist as we continue deeper into “Proteus”, Ulysses‘ third episode. Topics include: why Dermot is not impressed with the Library of Alexandria, the length of a mahamanvantara, what the heck a mahamanvantara is, Joyce’s youthful rage put into poetry, Joyce’s youthful interest in theosophy, Pico della…

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  • Ep. 37 – Who is this Dan Occam fellow, anyway?

    Dermot and Kelly tickle your brain with Stephen Dedalus’ thoughts on the Eucharist, William of Occam, hypostasis, consubstantiation, transubstantiation… we’ve got it all! Other major philosophical queries discussed include: How can so much bread and wine all become Christ’s body and blood. Does Stephen really understand hypostasis. When does soup become soup? Is it immoral…

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  • Who Was the Real Leopold Bloom?

    Yes. Only a foreigner would do. The Jews were foreigners in Dublin at that time. There was no hostility towards them. But contempt, the contempt that people always show towards the unknown. –James Joyce This post is a part of an occasional series on the real people behind the characters in Ulysses. To listen to…

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  • Ep. 36 – The Complex Life of Lucia Joyce- (w/Linus Ignatius & Llewie Nuñez)

    Linus Ignatius and Llewie Nuñez starred in the play Lucia Mad as James and Lucia Joyce, respectively, back in their university days. They drop by the podcast for a deep dive into the complex and tragic life of James Joyce’s daughter Lucia. We discuss how they prepared to portray the Joyces on-stage, Lucia’s genius as…

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  • Ulysses & The Odyssey: Calypso

    “… I found that for [Joyce] human character was best displayed – I had almost said entirely displayed – in the commonest acts of life. How a man eats his egg will give a better clue to his differentiation than how he goes forth to war… Cutting bread displays character better than cutting throats.”  –…

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