Vince Gilligan called, and WAKE answered! Toby and TJ are back for this special episode of WAKE, in response to the casual name-dropping of Finnegans Wake in the new Apple+ series, Pluribus. We spend some spoiler-filled time (spoiling the ending of both Pluribus AND Finnegans Wake) discussing this definitely-too-deliberate-to-be-accidental reference to Joyce’s final masterpiece, and what it might mean for the show as a whole. We’re talking falls, and loops, and morals, and humanity: all the things you’ve come to love about WAKE.
As we bask in the wake of completing the Wake, Toby and TJ welcome renowned author, librarian, academic, and bookfluencer George Koors to discuss how to get into the Wake, as well as what to do after it's done. We discuss the benefits and risks of BookTok, Bookstagram, and BookTube, the egalitarian nature of Joyce ensuring that through complexity all readers are rendered the same, and consider the dangers of placing beloved texts on syllabi. We discuss Taylor Swift, Ben Jonson, and Fyodor Dostoevsky, and George hits us with two monumental recommendations that will rattle your brain and strain at your wallet. To top it all, we get the world exclusive scoop on TJ's new play, learn the term "typoglycemia" and consider the weight we can place on art that survives time. We'd like to think WAKE is one of those survivors, as we enter our end-of-series hiatus...
This week's chatters: George Koors, Toby Malone, TJ Young
We can't believe it. Can you believe it? We actually finished reading Finnegans Wake. What started out as a podcast to read an "unreadable book" has turned into a journey that has endeared us to a magical community, connected with our family and friends, and reawakened our sense of what art can be. While sometimes it felt like climbing a sheer cliff-face, the toeholds we gained along the way made this a delightfully fulfilling project. For this final episode, Toby and TJ look back on WAKE and consider how you know when a project is over, embracing confusion, and how much we appreciate the spectators at the end of a marathon. We talk Joyce on film, Pinter, the Beatles, Lord of the Rings, and hypertexts, and pinpoint the exact moment the Harry Potter franchise lost TJ. We take on translation, and gimmicks, and mountaineering, and the question of how-fast-is-too-fast-to-read-the-Wake. Then, as we consider the stadium-sized Rubik's Cube that is the Wake, we are visited by the Patron Saint of WAKE for words of congratulations. It's an unmissable end to what has indeed proven to be a surprisingly listenable podcast.
This week's chatters: Toby Malone, TJ Young
Progress: 628 pages complete, 0 pages to go; 100% read.
Norris, David, and Carl Flint. Introducing Joyce: A Graphic Guide. London: Icon Books, 2013.
McCreedy, Jonathan. (2022). Joyce Studies in Italy: Joyspace: James Joyce and Space, 23 (2021): 159-74.
Episode 39: 4.1 (Part 2), p613-628
Season 1 · Episode 51
Wednesday, April 16, 2025 • Duration 01:51:15
There's nothing quite like ticking off a bucket list item, and today is the day, where Toby and TJ come to the end of the long reading road to finally finish Finnegans Wake. Before we get there, though, we have superstar guest Neil Wechsler to guide us through his favourite section of the book, along with passionate opinions on Hollywood hypocrisy, problematic shortcuts, and how the unique structure of the Wake is not a joke, nor a gimmick, but in fact proof that the human race is not entirely doomed. Joyce gives us an ending that's worth the wait, and feels well earned, as the pain of the cycle ends in a note of hope. We may have finished with the Wake, but we have a feeling it's not quite finished with us yet.
This week's readers: Neil Wechsler, Toby Malone, TJ Young
Progress: 628 pages complete, 0 pages to go; 100% read.
In the grand tradition of Finnegans Wake, WAKE has looped back around on itself to become a self-generating machine, as we welcome back musical innovator and the most reckless of stramashers, Tommy Mackay, to talk about WAKE: the Album! Yes, this very podcast is honoured to be the inspiration for at least half the tracks on Tommy's new (stra)mash-up album of music, smashing WAKE readings into the music of Taylor Swift, Wham!, Devo, and more, with more groan-worthy dad-joke pun titles than you could possibly handle.
There's a sailor on a horse! There's an invitation to suck a sugarstick! There's Gráinne O'Malley's girl power!
Join us for a track-by-track odyssey through WAKE: the Album, in the hope that no takedown notices emerge to ruin anyone's fun.
This week's chatters: Tommy Mackay, Toby Malone, TJ Young
Clips used by permission from the WAKE podcast by Toby Malone and TJ Young and also the audio-visual book by One Little Goat Theatre Company read by Richard Harte, directed by Adam Seelig.
Episode 38: 4.1 (Part 1), p593-613
Season 1 · Episode 50
Wednesday, April 2, 2025 • Duration 02:06:48
Book Four is upon us, and it is with mixed feelings, both excited and sad, that we launch into the final segments of Finnegans Wake. Helping us along the way is fan-favourite WAKE veteran, internationally-acclaimed author, Lucy "old rubberskin" Brazier, who helps us get into a typically ribald discussion of Simlish, Instagram thots, tortoise dreams, terrible superhero names, fan fiction, and a plan for a Biddy the Hen statue in Phoenix Park. Come for the reading, stay for our brutal takedown of the Oxford World's Classic: it's more fun than a sailor on a horse!
This week's readers: Lucy Brazier, Toby Malone, TJ Young
Progress: 613 pages complete, 15 pages to go; 97.61% read.
Bonus: Professors Adrien Peyrache and Arjun Krishnaswamy on Wake and the Sleeping Brain
Wednesday, March 26, 2025 • Duration 01:11:06
If sleep is the panacea of all ills, WAKE has found the very experts who can tell you exactly why that’s the case! On this week’s special bonus episode, Toby and TJ welcome internationally renowned neuroscientists, Professors Adrian Peyrache and Arjun Krishnaswamy, to talk about what’s going on inside our brains while we sleep. In an episode that’s part TED Talk and part HCE Talk, we break down insights into the sleeping brain, including how memory relies on good sleep hygiene, sleep paralysis, brain compasses, real-time dreaming, and how mice dream of mazes. We hear Adrien’s critique of the science of ‘Inception,’ position the Wake as the first-ever Large Language Model, and finally gain definitive proof of who the dreamer is. Oh, and with a whole section on erotic dream-infused cave paintings, this is a discussion that will definitely not put you to sleep.
This week's chatters: Adrien Peyrache, Arjun Krishnaswamy, Toby Malone, TJ Young
Bonus: Fionnán O’Connor on Whiskey and the Wake (or, Jamessan’s Slake)
Season 1 · Episode 48
Monday, March 17, 2025 • Duration 01:27:55
Flushed with their firestuffostered friendship, WAKE celebrates St. Patrick’s Day by exploring all of the many ways that Finnegans Wake refers to whiskey: Ireland’s beloved, potent créatúr. Joined by world whiskey historian and former Sweny’s volunteer Fionnán O’Connor, we explode some myths regarding monks, St Patrick, and potatoes, brush off our pub stool wisdom, prepare the worm on our darling little stills, and consider the role trust plays in what is simultaneously the oldest and youngest whiskey industry in the world. So, tuck yourself into a snug in your local shebeen with a ball of malt, and don’t forget to get in on a round: we bet you can’t stay for just one. Happy St. Paddy’s!
Today's chatters: Fionnán O'Connor, Toby Malone, TJ Young
Bonus: Igor Belokrinitsky and the Ukrainian Wake in Progress Reading Group
Wednesday, March 12, 2025 • Duration 01:01:00
With stubbornness and defiance, WAKE welcomes the wonderful Igor Belokrinitsky, representative of the Ukrainian Wake in Progress Finnegans Wake reading group! Igor joins Toby and TJ for a wide-ranging conversation about the true meaning of indomitability, where Joyce stands in to tell prescient lessons about colonialism, independence, identity, language and exile, which speak directly to the plight of the brave, besieged Ukrainians. We talk about Thomas Pynchon, Nestor Makhno, Monty Python, Joseph Cornell's boxes, and the brilliant mind maps created by Linda Lotiel for each Ukrainian reading session. In war, schadenfreude is necessary, so take your shots at the Russian General if you're a true Wake Otaku, and gird your wedgewords for an episode that is just as generative as it is consumptive. WAKE stands with Ukraine!
This week's chatters: Igor Belokrinitsky, Toby Malone, TJ Young
Contextual Notes
A note from Igor:
...And as you graciously offered to support our mission, please point your listeners to uafirstaid.com/en specializing in first aid kits and tourniquets.
We have no rare earth minerals to offer in return, but would happily unearth a limerick!
Ever have trouble remembering things? Phone numbers? Grocery lists? Names of casual acquaintances? If so, get ready to feel very self-conscious, because on this week's WAKE, we meet the indomitable Neal Kosaly-Meyer, a musician who decided, entirely of his own volition, to spend seventeen years memorising and performing the entirety of Finnegans Wake. Seriously. Toby and TJ caught Neal as he prepared to take on the punishing 'Tales From the Inn' chapter (premiering December 2025!), where we discuss memorisation, how the Wake is like music that most people neglect to play, rhythm, and, of course, offer WAKE's first and definitive opinion on Kendrick Lamar at the Super Bowl. Don't forget: it's a new WAKE!
This week's chatters: Neal Kosaly-Meyer, Toby Malone, TJ Young
Finnegan's Wake 03:38. trad. Played and sung by Kevin Kennedy from the One Little Goat theatre company production, directed by Adam Seelig. www.onelittlegoat.org/finneganswake
Wake Me Up Before You Goan 03:13. performed by Richard Harte from the One Little Goat theatre company production. Music - Maucoli the pianoman's version of Wham's 'Wake Me Up Before You Go Go.''
The Ballad Of Persse O'Reilly 06:31. performed by Meg Logue from the Wake podcast.
Thunderwords 01:58. read by Adam Harvey, Joyce Geek - joycegeek.com/thundervideos/ Music - Thunderbirds theme tune
Tip It! 04:37. performed by Richard Harte from the One Little Goat theatre company production. Backing track - 'Whip It!' by Devo.
Denti Alligator 02:43. From the Wake podcast, read by Toby Malone, TJ Young, Tommy Mackay. Music - 'See You Later Alligator' Bill Haley and The Comets
Thunderslog 04:06. from the Wake podcast -Toby Malone, TJ Young. Music Steve 'n' Seagulls live cover of AC/DC's 'Thunderstruck.' Lady Macbeth - Kate Fleetwood from the 2010 Rupert Goold production.
Cunstuntonoplies 02:48. read by Patrick Horgan, 1985. Music - 'Istanbul Not Constantinople' by They Might Be Giants.
Wake It Off 03:45. performed by Richard Harte from the One Little Goat theatre company production. Backing track 'Shake It Off ' by Taylor Swift.
Respectable 03:20. Seth Austin from the Wake podcast. Music - 'Respectable' by Mel and Kim.
Suck It Yourself, Sugarstick! 03:48. Toby Malone, Sarah Kane from the Wake podcast. Music - 'Suck It And See' by Arctic Monkeys.
Wake That 06:20. performed by Richard Harte from the One Little Goat theatre company production. Music - 'Never Forget instrumental' by Take That.
Bonus Tracks:
Hi Ho Silver Sailor https://www.dailyreckless.com/2025/04/06/hi-ho-silver-sailor/
Gavan Kennedy, Finnegan Wakes: a Machine of Memory and Meaning https://journal.burningman.org/2018/08/black-rock-city/participate-in-brc/finnegan-wakes-a-machine-of-memory-and-meaning/
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