Welcome to our little corner of the literary world! We're a husband and wife team who, like so many exhausted parents, found ourselves craving connection—with each other and with the stories that remind us we're more than just people who wipe surfaces and answer the same question seventeen times. After our daughter finally goes to bed each night, we pour a drink, collapse onto the couch, and somehow muster the energy to dive into a single short story from A Century of Fiction in the New York ...
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Samarmstrongblanco Podcasts
1
Screen Test: The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (Ben Stiller, 2013)
27:32
27:32
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27:32We finally broke free from short stories and dove into film—actually, two versions of the same film. The central question: how do you transform a 5-page story into a two-hour movie? We dug into what has to fundamentally change when you adapt a short story for screen, what a visual medium can do that prose simply can't, and whether these adaptations…
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"The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" by James Thurber (1939)
46:45
46:45
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46:45We're officially in a rut—three middle-aged white men in a row, all deeply unsatisfied with their lives. James Thurber's "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" (1939) gave us a protagonist who escapes into elaborate fantasies (complete with Sam's failed attempts at "pocketa pocketa pocketa" sound effects), but we couldn't help asking: why should we actu…
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1
"Over the River and Through the Wood" by John O'Hara (1934)
43:17
43:17
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43:17We doubled our runtime for this one, and honestly? Worth it. John O’Hara’s “Over the River and Through the Wood” (1934) immediately had us both leaning forward on the bed, which is saying something at 11 PM. We started by digging in to the actual Thanksgiving poem that clearly inspired O’Hara’s story, then spiraled into everything from Jane Austen …
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1
"Life Cycle of a Literary Genius" by E. B. White (1926)
20:30
20:30
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20:30We're kicking things off with E.B. White's 1926 "Life Cycle of a Literary Genius"—and honestly, we almost didn't make it past the title. After forgetting to read the introduction (parenting brain strikes again), stumbling into some juicy gossip about White's complicated relationship with his New Yorker editor, and one of us starting out pretty skep…
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