This comic book project stitches together the most important moments from decades (and thousands of pages) of X-Men comics. We talk to cartoonist Ed Piskor about his production process, the comics market and the relevance of the X-Men's themes in the present day.

Interested in the media we discussed this episode? Please support the show by purchasing it through our affiliate store:

• X-Men: Grand Design 
• Hip Hop Family Tree
• Wizzywig

Additional Resources:

• The X-Men's 40-year history has just been compressed into one easy-to-read story
• In X-Men: Grand Design, Ed Piskor tells the superheroes' whole story
• Ed Piskor breaks down X-Men history with style in this Grand Design exclusive
• X-Men: Grand Design Wants to Save Marvel's Mutants From Themselves
• Chris Claremont & Ed Piskor Reflect on the Grand Design of the X-Men Legacy
• Cartoonist Ed Piskor on 'Hip Hop Family Tree' and the Importance of Creative Freedom

This band has been creating experimental music for 35 years. So we look at the moment when they doubled down by teaming up with musicians from Big Business. We confront our own subjectivity about music and examine how to make a living from something creative like this long-running doom machine.

Interested in the media we discussed this episode? Please support the show by purchasing it through our affiliate store:

• (A) Senile Animal
• Day Late, Dollar Short
• This Machine Kills Artists
• The Deal
• What One Becomes
• Hew Time

Additional Resources:

• Orinda's Noise Vomitorium
• The Melvins: A Senile Animal
• Melvins (A) Senile Animal
• Melvins Interviews and Studio
• (((O))) : INTERVIEW: JARED WARREN FROM BIG BUSINESS
• Coady Willis of Big Business Talks What He’s Learned From the Melvins

David Simon and George Pelecanos' show makes us uncomfortable about sex work. But it's to better understand capitalism. We discuss their exploration of community, corruption and the production of both this show and the labor that inspired it.

Interested in the media we discussed this episode? Please support the show by purchasing it through our affiliate store:

• The Deuce, Season One
• Last Exit to Brooklyn
• Taxi Driver
• American Gigolo
• Light Sleeper
• The Night Porter

Additional Resources:

• The Deuce and the Birth of Porn
• ‘The Deuce’ Recalls Sex and Sleaze in 1970s Times Square
• The Deuce isn't about sex. It's about capitalism.
• How ‘The Deuce’ Predicts Modern-Day New York
• The Deuce: Season One Ratings

We try to unpack what little is known about this author, while providing a "succinct" description of the book. Along the way we discuss the publishing industry, book awards, obscenity, themes and the mythical reputation this tome has garnered over the years.

Interested in the media we discussed this episode? Please support the show by purchasing it through our affiliate store:

• Gravity's Rainbow
• Inherent Vice
• The Crying of Lot 49
• V.
• American Flagg
• Divided States of Hysteria
• Casanova
• Satellite Sam
• Moby-Dick
• The Illuminatus! Trilogy
• The Kills
• Field Notes

Additional Resources:

• George Plimpton on Thomas Pynchon's V.
• V. Squared
• Pynchon from A to V
• Duncan, J. (2013). Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon. Salem Press Encyclopedia Of Literature.
• Muste, J. M., & Weisenburger, S. C. (2014). Thomas Pynchon. Salem Press Biographical Encyclopedia.
• Herman, L., & Weisenburger, S. (2013). Gravity's Rainbow, Domination, and Freedom. Athens: University of Georgia Press.
• Pulitzer Jurors Dismayed on Pynchon 
• Pulitzer.org
• Pulitzer People are no Prize 
• Thomas Pynchon's letter to Bruce Allen
• L. McLaughlin, R., (2002). Unreadable Stares: Imperial Narratives and the Colonial Gaze in Gravity's Rainbow. Pynchon Notes. (50-51), pp.83–96. DOI: http://doi.org/10.16995/pn.72
• Thomas Pynchon shows us how white writers can avoid appropriation
• Pynchon’s Gravity's Rainbow: The V-2 Rocket Cartel as Multinational Corporate Conspiracy
• Rocket Power