Claire (she/they) and Han (any pronouns) examine Gideon the Ninth, Chapter 17 with hard-hitting questions like what's happening with inter-House rankings? Why can't dead people do murder? Can we commission fan works in the middle of our podcast?

Content Warning: murder, child soldiers, torture, criminalization of children under occupation, slavery

Further Reading

Kinka Usher (1999) Mystery Men

Mikko Joronen (2016) Minor(s) Matter: Stone Throwing, Securitization, and the Government of Palestinian Childhood Under Israeli Military Rule [Note: we normally make sure scholarly work that we share is open-access. Don't pay to read this! Ask your library for access if you don't have a relationship with a university.]

R. F. Kuang (2018-2020) The Poppy War Trilogy

Kathleen Stokker (1995) Folklore Fights the Nazis

Claire Beans (she/they) and Han Koehle (any pronouns) dig into Gideon the Ninth, Chapter 17. (Almost) everybody tries to call back the ghosts of absent friends. The Eighth get weird. The third also gets weird. Actually Necromancers generally are weird.

This week's cover art is

Content Warning: murder, grief, blood, self-harm, cannibalism, abuse, child soldiers,

Further Reading:

bell hooks (2004) The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love

Posh Painter (2024) European Noble Titles Explained [note: this is straightforward and contains interesting etymological facts, but it's also hardcore uncritical of empire and monarchy]

Naomi Novik (2020-2022) Scholomance Trilogy (A Deadly Education, The Last Graduate, and The Golden Enclaves)

Claire (she/they) and Han (any pronouns) reread Gideon the Ninth Act II, Chapter 16. Gideon and Harrow enjoy their first major victory on the path to lyctorhood. Then, everything changes.

Content Warnings: death, child abuse, emetophobia, humiliation, mild cannibalism

Further Reading:

Gavin Van Horn, Robin Wall Kimmerer, and John Hausdoerffer (2022) Kinship

James Ashworth (2022). Neanderthal Extinction May Have Been Caused by Sex, Not Fighting.

Victor Hugo (1831) The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

Nun Pod With Left Grief is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike International License. Find us at NunPod.com and get our attention with #NunPod.

If you’d like to support our show with your voice, share NunPod with a friend or leave a review on Apple Podcasts. If you’d like to use money to support us, we encourage you to think of the amount you’d like to send us on Patreon each month and then instead send it here. Let us know that you did!

Claire (she/they) and Han (any pronouns) welcome Hannah (she/her) to re-read Gideon the Ninth, Chapter 15. The Ninth receive an invitation. All the Houses get together. Gideon gets to eat a dessert.

Our cover is guest Hannah. You can find her wonderful cosplay and commentary on TikTok and and Tumblr.

Content Warning: eating your cav, murder, infertility, slavery

Further Reading:

Catechism regarding priests acting in persona Christi Capitis

Aubrey Smalls (2025) Did You Know About Court Dwarfs?

Samin Nosrat (2013) Jeweled Rice

T. H. White (1958) The Once and Future King

Nun Pod With Left Grief is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike International License. Find us at NunPod.com and get our attention with #NunPod.

If you’d like to support our show with your voice, share NunPod with a friend or leave a review on Apple Podcasts. If you’d like to use money to support us, we encourage you to think of the amount you’d like to send us on Patreon each month and then instead send it here. Let us know that you did!

Note from Han: Sorry this is late! I have three major grad school deadlines coming up and I totally forgot, like, what day it was and that this podcast exists. My bad.

Claire Beans (she/they) and Han Koehle (any pronouns) re-read Chapter 14 of Gideon the Ninth. Gideon and Harrow face an interesting challenge and take their relationship to an awkward new level. Harrow takes a nap. Gideon lays down some boundaries.

Today’s cover art is by Han.

Content Warning: blood, pain, injury, eugenics

Nun Pod With Left Grief is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike International License. Find us at NunPod.com and get our attention with #NunPod.

If you’d like to support our show with your voice, share NunPod with a friend or leave a review on Apple Podcasts. If you’d like to use money to support us, we encourage you to think of the amount you’d like to send us on Patreon each month and then instead send it here. Let us know that you did!

Claire Beans (she/they) and Han Koehle (any pronouns) dive into Gideon the Ninth Act II Chapter 13. Gideon and Harrow negotiate. Han questions Harrow's understanding of the rules. Claire highlights other necro/cav models. Conversation gets unusually dark there in the middle.

Today’s cover art was provided by Claire.

Content Warning: Blood, genitals, sex, emetophobia, kink, slavery, use of human remains, genocide, Nazis, eugenics

Further Reading:

Arendse I Lund (2016) The People Who Became Book Bindings

Jim Crow Museum (2013) Human Leather

Alexandra Minna Stern (2015) Eugenic Nation: Faults and Frontiers of Better Breeding in Modern America

Ghada Sasa (2022) Oppressive Pines: Uprooting Israeli Green Colonialism and Implanting Palestinian A'wna

John Pollack (2011) The Pun Also Rises: How the Humble Pun Revolutionized Language

Nun Pod With Left Grief is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike International License. Find us at NunPod.com and get our attention with #NunPod.

If you’d like to support our show with your voice, share NunPod with a friend or leave a review on Apple Podcasts. If you’d like to use money to support us, we encourage you to think of the amount you’d like to send us on Patreon each month and then instead send it here. Let us know that you did!

Claire Beans (she/they) and Han Koehle (any pronouns) welcome guest Geddy (she/her) to dig into Gideon the Ninth Chapter 12. Harrow does some crafting. Gideon is full of shit. Some people are not where Gideon expects them to be, and Gideon is in some unexpected places herself.

Today’s cover art features our lovely guest Geddy (and friend of the show Kristen), photographed by Han.

Content Warning: death, blood, murder probably?

Further Reading:

Britannica (n.d.) Memento mori

Asaf Weisman et al. (2019) Congenital Insensitivity to Pain: A Misnomer.

SnooFloofs3374 (2024) I'm unable to feel pain, AMA

Keith Houston (2015) The mysterious origins of punctuation

Nun Pod With Left Grief is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike International License. Find us at NunPod.com and get our attention with #NunPod.

If you’d like to support our show with your voice, share NunPod with a friend or leave a review on Apple Podcasts. If you’d like to use money to support us, we encourage you to think of the amount you’d like to send us on Patreon each month and then instead send it here. Let us know that you did!

Claire (she/they) and Han (any pronouns) dig into Gideon the Ninth chapter 11, contrasting the duals between Gideon and the cavaliers of the Fifth and Third and exploring the relationship between Magnus and Jeannemary. Claire has a spectacular cosplay idea. There's quite a lot of sword fighting discussion in this one.

Content Warning: fatphobia, violence, child soldiers

Further Reading:

Roy Ward Baker (1981) The Monster Club

Susanna Ives (2023) How to Victorian Maid Servant

Joseph Brassey (2017) Skyfarer

Olivier Girard et al (2023) "Living High - Training Low" for Olympic Medal Performance

Annotated List of Historical [Swordfighting] Manuals

United Nations (n.d.) Child Recruitment and Use

Nun Pod With Left Grief is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike International License. Find us at NunPod.com and get our attention with #NunPod.

If you’d like to support our show with your voice, share NunPod with a friend or leave a review on Apple Podcasts. If you’d like to use money to support us, we encourage you to think of the amount you’d like to send us on Patreon each month and then instead send it here. Let us know that you did!