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What‘s the meaning of life? Yep, that‘s a biggie. Time of My Life with Laurence Mozafari is a fun and thoughtful interview podcast asking - and trying to answer - some of life‘s biggest questions with help from remarkable people who have already lived it. In a society that obsesses with youth, this podcast aims for a frank and honest conversation to capture the knowledge, anecdotes, and observations from some of the world’s most remarkable elders, including Only Fools‘ star Sir David Jason, ...
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re:verb is a podcast about politics, culture, and language in action, featuring interviews and segments from scholars, writers, critics, and activists in the humanities, social sciences, and outside the academy.
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E89: Distance and Suffering in News Reporting (w/ John Oddo, Cameron Mozafari, & Alex Kirsch)
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On today’s show, Calvin and Alex sit down with the co-authors of a hot-off-the-presses article in Discourse & Society about journalistic reporting on US drone strikes in the Middle East: Dr. John Oddo (Carnegie Mellon University), Dr. Cameron Mozafari (Cornell University), and Alex Kirsch (MA Professional Writing graduate, CMU). In their article, e…
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E88: re:joinder - Lose Bigly with Scott Adams, pt. 3: Movies, Moist Robots, and Mass Delusions
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Do you consider yourself to be a rational person? If so, Scott Adams (a.k.a. “The Dilbert Guy”), has some bad news for you. On today’s show, we attempt to surmount our various cognitive dissonances and confirmation biases to better understand “How to See Reality in a More Useful Way,” according to the third chapter of Scott Adams’s 2017 pseudo-rhet…
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E87: Self-Immolation as Rhetorical Protest (w/ Dr. James Chase Sanchez)
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Disclaimer: This episode covers sensitive issues related to suicide and self-harm. If this topic makes you uncomfortable, we recommend skipping this episode. If you or someone you know is in crisis, in the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a cris…
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E86: Discourse & Manipulation (Part 2)
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On today’s show, Alex and Calvin continue to break down the concept of “Manipulation” in rhetoric and political discourse, recapping part one of this series, demonstrating strategies for identifying and critiquing manipulation, and discussing how this kind of large-scale “mind control” is affecting contemporary foreign policy discourse in the US. T…
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On today’s show, Alex and Calvin break down the concept of “Manipulation” in rhetoric and political discourse. We outline some key strategies for identifying and critiquing manipulation, and discuss its social and political implications as a form of large-scale “mind control.” The term manipulation, as we define it, comes from a school of linguisti…
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E84: Toward a Media Theory of the U.S.-Mexico Underground (w/ Dr. Juan Llamas-Rodriguez)
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On today’s show, Ben sits down with Dr. Juan Llamas-Rodriguez, Assistant Professor at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, to discuss his research at the intersections of border studies, infrastructure studies, and Latin American and Latinx diasporic media. We begin by discussing Juan’s approaches to media studi…
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Ever since its announcement in 2021, the Atlanta police training facility project known as “Cop City” has been the subject of much criticism from activists concerned with police violence and environmental justice. The proposal included razing 85 acres of forest in DeKalb County, Georgia (just South of the city of Atlanta) to build, among other thin…
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E82: The Rhetoric of AI Hype (w/ Dr. Emily M. Bender)
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Are you a writing instructor or student who’s prepared to turn over all present and future communication practices to the magic of ChatGPT? Not so fast! On today’s show, we are joined by Dr. Emily M. Bender, Professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Washington and a pre-eminent academic critic of so-called “generative AI” tech…
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E81: Academic Labor Solidarity (w/ Dr. James J. Brown, Jr.)
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On today’s episode, we’re thrilled to be joined once again by friend-of-the-show Dr. Jim Brown, Jr., Associate Professor of English and Director of the Digital Studies Center at Rutgers-Camden. While Jim is mainly known to us as an expert in digital rhetorical studies, today we speak to him about his experience as outgoing president of the Camden c…
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E80: re:joinder - Scott Adams & Persuasion: The Squeakuel
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The cognitive scientists at re:verb couldn't get enough of Win Bigly, Scott Adams' bizarre treatise on persuasion in a supposedly post-fact era. After tackling the introduction in December (listen to the first installment here!), we bring you our reading and re:joinder critique the first full chapter, which discusses why ordinary people like us fai…
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E79: Legitimizing Situated Knowledge in East Palestine, Ohio (w/ Sophie Wodzak & Dr. Erin Brock Carlson)
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On February 3, a Norfolk Southern freight train carrying vinyl chloride and other hazardous chemicals derailed in the town of East Palestine, Ohio. Fearing an explosion, emergency crews conducted a controlled burn of several of the cars, releasing toxic chemicals into the air and forcing the evacuation of local residents. In the ensuing weeks, pict…
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E78: Campus Misinformation and Academic Freedom (w/ Dr. Brad Vivian)
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Trigger warning: if you are offended by evidence-based arguments against moral panics surrounding higher education, listen with discretion! Light kidding aside, this episode addresses a very serious issue: restrictions on free speech in higher education. And no, we’re not talking about the exaggerated culture war invocations: “angry mobs” of “coddl…
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E77: Theaters of War (w/ Dr. Roger Stahl)
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Was your favorite film approved by Uncle Sam? And just how much of your streaming watchlist did the CIA curate? On today’s episode, Calvin and Alex are joined by Dr. Roger Stahl, Professor of Communication Studies at the University of Georgia, to discuss the widespread problem of US information operations in the motion picture industry–including, m…
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Nikki Gullet - Nan - Time of My Life with Laurence Mozafari
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This is a very special and incredibly personal episode of Time of My Life, which is dedicated to my nan, Edith Gullett, (or Nikki as she preferred to be known). As I mentioned in the first episode, I had an incredibly close relationship with my grandmother, and in fact, she was the person who inspired this podcast. Unfortunately in early 2022, she …
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E76: re:joinder - Lose Bigly: Scott Adams Explains Business, Politics, and Persuasion
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Are you winning bigly? No? Neither is Scott Adams, the infamous cartoonist, blogger, and self-proclaimed “expert predictor”, whose formerly ubiquitous comic strip Dilbert was recently pulled from national syndication. In September, Dilbert featured “anti-woke” content caricaturing diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in the corporate world,…
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“A.I. Is Making It Easier Than Ever for Students to Cheat,” proclaims Slate. The Chronicle of Higher Education asks, rhetorically: “Will Artificial Intelligence Kill College Writing?” And the New York Times warns: “A.I. is Mastering Language. Should We Trust What It Says?” Judging by media coverage of A.I. writing algorithms, you would think they’r…
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E74: Jordan Peele and the Speculative Fiction of Blackness (w/ Dr. andré carrington)
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For this year’s Halloween special, we wanted to take a journey through the filmography of one of our favorite film directors, Jordan Peele. From the breakout success of his 2017 thriller Get Out, to 2019’s creepy and horrifying tour-de-force Us, to this year’s action-packed monster movie Nope, Jordan Peele is becoming arguably one of the most impor…
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E73: re:joinder - The CIA's Podcast
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We at re:verb can neither confirm nor deny whether the truth will set you free - but it certainly provides good fodder for rhetorical criticism! On today’s show, Alex and Calvin present a re:joinder episode with a unique rhetorical artifact: an “unclassified” podcast recently released by one of the most secretive intelligence agencies in the world,…
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E72: Tenant Organizing and the Cult of Property Values (w/ Luke Melonakos-Harrison)
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What’s a tenant union, and why does it matter? On today’s show, Alex and Calvin get some fascinating answers to this question from Luke Melonakos-Harrison, a Masters student in Yale University’s Divinity School, tenant union organizer with the Connecticut Tenants Union and the Connecticut Democratic Socialists of America, and aspiring Methodist pas…
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At the recent 2022 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), right-wing movement leaders couldn’t stop whining about “pronouns.” For example, Texas Senator Ted Cruz said that his preferred pronouns are “kiss my ass,” and former Trump official Matt Schlapp complained that instead of carrying out his “duties” like dealing with the “open border…
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E70: We hold these Truths & Replies to be self-evident: What is Truth Social?
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On June 28, 2022, explosive public testimony was delivered by a former Trump Administration aide named Cassidy Hutchinson in front of the United States House Select Committee investigating the January 6th attacks. Hutchinson’s testimony corroborated and deepened the Committee’s case that President Trump had led the attacks. In addition, Hutchinson …
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E69: "We're all trying to find the guy who can do something about this"
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In the wake of shooting massacres in Uvalde, TX and Buffalo, NY, public outcry has been sustained and vociferous, recalling similarly intense reactions to previous mass shootings over the past 10 years. But in the US, public policy responses to such events are rarely as swift or sweeping as most of us would prefer. Just two days after the massacre …
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E68: How can podcasting help us re:engage with social justice (inside and outside the academy)? // 2022 Computers & Writing Conference Special Episode
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This episode was produced as a virtual panel presentation for the 2022 Computers and Writing Conference. It has been 2 years in the making, and we’re so pleased to finally present it to you! Academics have been increasingly using podcasts as rhetorically rich tools for achieving pedagogical goals and re-theorizing the power and potential of sonic r…
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E67: re:read - Bartleby, the Scrivener
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We would prefer not to write a description for this episode… but here’s one anyway! Today’s episode is a re:vival of our re:read series, where we create dramatic interpretive readings of short fiction with contemporary political and cultural relevance. In this installment, inspired by our recent conversation with Dr. Kendall Phillips on “rhetorics …
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E66: Food, Culture, and Intimacy (w/ Dr. Anita Mannur)
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On today’s show, Ben and Alex have the privilege to dish with Dr. Anita Mannur, Professor of English and Asian American Studies at Miami University, about her research on the intersections that food has with culture, race, and gender. We begin the conversation by reflecting on how discourses around food and consumption practices, especially in post…
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E65: I The People: Conservative Populist Rhetorics (w/ Dr. Paul Elliott Johnson)
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Although “populism” is a term that has been rigorously discussed and theorized in political science and communication studies, the term has received special attention ever since the political rise and presidency of Donald Trump. But what does populism actually mean, and how can we trace the lineage of populist conservative discourses that prefigure…
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