Rimona Beans (she/they) and Han Koehle (it/any) reexamine Chapter 35 of Gideon the Ninth. An awkward new coalition emerges in the face of crisis, and it's weird for everybody. Chekhov's... monkey's paw? Or something? This is not the villain monologue we expected. Coronabeth is weirder than Gideon realized, and not even in a hot way.

Content Notice: mock-retching [00:02:43], murder, corpse-tampering, genocide, child death, Weird Jesus Stuff, eugenics, ableism, Nazis, reproductive abuse,

Further Reading:

Katie White (Feb 14, 2026) The Surprisingly Sexual Side of Medieval Christian Art

Planet Bee Foundation (Aug 8, 2024) The Essential Jobs of the Worker Honey Bee

Molly Crabapple (2026) Here Where We Live Is Our Country

British Columbia: An Untold History (n.d.) Stanley Park Established

Perpetual Bone Tarot Deck

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.

Rimona Beans (she/they) and Han Koehle (it/any) welcome Lizzi (they/them) to dig into Gideon the Ninth, Chapter 32. The squad investigates a Lyctor lab and uncovers unsettling truths about Teacher. You can find Lizzi on Tumblr and TikTok.

We really appreciate your patience with our second brief hiatus as Han focused on teaching its first college class this summer! We missed you and we should be back to our regular every-other-week schedule for the rest of the season.

content warning: death, body horror [teeth], murder, genocide [canon], experimental abuse, incarceration, child soldiers, incest, necrophilia

further reading

Holocaust Encyclopedia (n.d.) The Nuremberg Code

Harriet A. Washington (2007) Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present

Angela Davis (2003) Are Prisons Obsolete?

Traci Burch (2022) Adding Insult to Injury: The Justification Frame in Official Narratives of Officer-Involved Killings

IMDB (2025) Pluribus

Han has mentioned a few times not saying "Samael" out loud for religious reasons. If you're curious about that, you can learn about it on Throwing Sheyd, but we could not find the correct episode so enjoy the entire sixteen hours of Jewish demonology content.

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.

POOL SCENE POOL SCENE POOL SCENE

Guests Hannah (katakaluptastrophy on Tumblr and @The_Pentiad on TikTok), Caro (@ImaginaryCaro on TikTok and elsewhere), and Tom (dayneonychus on Tumblr) join us for a very special episode about Gideon the Ninth, Chapter 31 (the Pool Scene!!!)

Content Warning: drowning, torture, death, murder, sacrifice, John Elizabeth Gaius, child soldiers, genocide; child abuse; infertility; eugenics; infanticide; sexual violence; suicide; romanticization of abuse

Further Reading:

NO! Against Adult Supremacy (2016)

Paulo Freire (1970) Pedagogy of the Oppressed

Frantz Fanon (1952) Black Skin, White Masks

Rebekah Brown (2024) Why Childhood Trauma Survivors Blame Themselves CPTSD Foundation

Gillian Rose (1995) Love's Work: A Reckoning With Life

gayabstractconcept (2024) Bought At a Price Archive of Our Own.

Katakaluptastrophy (2026) [Hannah's account of Muir's appearance at Corpus in May 2026]

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.

Claire Beans (she/they) and Han Koehle (it/any) welcome T. X. Watson (any) for Gideon the Ninth, Act IV, Chapter 30. Gideon talks through some ideas with Palamedes. Dulcinea tells an unbelievable story. Judith makes a decision. You make some art at the end.

Content Warning: murder, manipulation, suicide, child neglect/abuse, dismemberment, incest, cannibalism, deception

Further Reading:

Jaume Aurell (2024) The Origins of the University: Questions of Identity and Historical Continuity

Minouche Shafik (1998) What We Owe to Each Other: A New Social Contract for a Better Society

Charles W. Mills (1997) The Racial Contract

Avgi Saketopoulou (2023) Sexuality Beyond Consent: Risk, Race, Traumatophilia

Brené Brown (2012) Listening to Shame

Rafia Zakaria (2024) Why Brené Brown's Gospel of Vulnerability Fails the World's Most Vulnerable

The Adventure Zone (2021) Amnesty - Episode 34 (excerpt: "One day you're gonna laugh at a joke")

Stefano Harney & Fred Moten (2013) The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study

Han Koehle (2026) Berkeley Legacies of Eugenics Annotated Conference Notes

Paul Provenza & Penn Jillette (2005) The Aristocrats (excerpt: "The Filthiest Joke Ever Told")

Immanuel Kant (1797) On a Supposed Right to Lie Because of Philanthropic Concerns

Jeffrey Craynor and Sarah Griffin (2021) Start With This "Perceiving the Audience"

T.X. Watson (2026) Why don't the Humanities do experiments? (kinda clickbait)

T.X. Watson (2017) "The Boston Hearth Project" in Sunvault: Stories of Solarpunk and Eco-Speculation

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.

Claire Beans (she/they) and Han Koehle (it/any) re-read Gideon the Ninth, Chapter 29. Gideon tries to ground herself but everything at Canaan House is fucking weird.

Content Warning: death, murder, mild cannibalism

Further Reading:

J. S. A. Lowe. (2021). Kitten Thinks of Nothing but Murder All Day: Tumblr Text Post Memes as Fandom Detournement. a tumblr book: platform and cultures

NASA et al. (2020). The world's oldest story? Astronomers say global myths about 'seven sisters' stars may reach back 100,000 years. The Conversation.

Jeffrey Cranor and Joseph Fink (2021) Start With This, "But How Does It End?"

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.

John (he/him) comes over to chat with Claire Beans (she/they) and Han Koehle (it/any) about Gideon the Ninth, Act IV, Chapter 27. Gideon goes to tea with the eighth. Everyone wants to punch Silas (and Babs, but he's not in this one). Claire has unexpected sympathy for Silas (who remains punchable). Han has unexpected sympathy for Glaurica.

Content Warning: John Gaius (implied), Death, Murder, Slavery, (Punitive?) Amputation, Torture, Abuse, Dios Apate (implied), Eugenics, Suicide,

Further Reading:

Richard Allen (2023) Toward a Philosophy of Melodrama

Rebecca Lesses (2009) Lilith

Mass Effect 3 (2012) Mordin Death Scene

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 (it/any) dig into Gideon the Ninth, Act IV, Chapter 27. Harrow and Pal negotiate. Gideon and Cam negotiate. Gideon and Harrow open a door. Gideon and Harrow negotiate.

Content Warning: Pretty chill week all things considered. Oblique references to oppression and exploitation, scientific racism, death and human remains,

Further Reading:

Robert N. Proctor and Londa Schiebinger (2008) Agnotology: The Making and Unmaking of Ignorance

Stanley Cohen (2001) States of Denial: Knowing About Atrocities and Suffering

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 (it/any) revisit Gideon the Ninth, Act IV, Chapter 26. Harrow falls back on her old patterns. Gideon seeks comfort. Silas makes an offer.

Content Warning: child death, murder, verbal abuse, cannibalism, lyctor sex, experimental abuse, genocide, torture, eugenics

Further Reading:

Vrinda Dalmiya. 2000. Loving Paradoxes: A Feminist Reclamation of the Goddess Kali. Hypatia 15(1):125-150.

Anastasia Pestinova (c. 2023) Transgressive Feminine: The Case of Baba Yaga

Nicky Falkof (2025) Trump and South Africa: What is White Victimhood, and How Is It Linked to White Supremacy? The Conversation.

Lucy Nicholas, Sal Clark, Christine Agius, and Kay Cook (2024) Antifeminist, Manosphere and Right-Wing Extremist Sentiments Among Men Who Use Domestic and Family Violence: Masculinism, Misinformation, and the Justificatory Logics of Violence. NORMA: 1-20. [Audio version available]

Lyz Lenz (2015) A Brief History of Dwarfism Pacific Standard.

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.