Moby Dick Pod

Chapter 87 - The Grand Armada

August 20, 2023 15:00 - 28 minutes - 19.7 MB

"Owing to the density of the crowd of reposing whales, more immediately surrounding the embayed axis of the herd, no possible chance of escape was at present afforded us. We must watch for a breach in the living wall that hemmed us in; the wall that had only admitted us in order to shut us up." The Pequod discovers a pod of whales in the pacific and go on a long hunt. Cows & calfs.

Chapter 86 - The Tail

January 30, 2023 04:00 - 11 minutes - 8.19 MB

"Dissect him how I may, then, I but go skin deep; I know him not, and never will." We're talking about the tail of the whale.

Chapter 85 - The Fountain

December 02, 2022 17:00 - 12 minutes - 8.77 MB

"And how nobly it raises our conceit of the mighty, misty monster, to behold him solemnly sailing through a calm tropical sea; his vast, mild head overhung by a canopy of vapor, engendered by his incommunicable contemplations, and that vapor—as you will sometimes see it—glorified by a rainbow, as if Heaven itself had put its seal upon his thoughts." Ishmael considers the spout of the whale and its larger meaning.

Chapter 84 - Pitchpoling

June 21, 2022 01:00 - 5 minutes - 4.04 MB

"The agonized whale goes into his flurry; the tow-line is slackened, and the pitchpoler dropping astern, folds his hands, and mutely watches the monster die." Description of another weapons used to kill whales.

Chapter 83 - Jonah Historically Regarded

April 29, 2022 18:00 - 5 minutes - 3.82 MB

"Possibly, too, Jonah might have ensconced himself in a hollow tooth; but, on second thoughts, the Right Whale is toothless." We're still talking about Jonah.

Chapter 82 - The Honor and Glory of Whaling

April 28, 2022 16:00 - 7 minutes - 5.32 MB

"There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true method." A literary comparison of whaling heroes and myths.

Chapter 81 - The Pequod Meets the Virgin

March 14, 2022 18:00 - 26 minutes - 18.2 MB

"For all his old age, and his one arm, and his blind eyes, he must die the death and be murdered, in order to light the gay bridals and other merry-makings of men, and also to illuminate the solemn churches that preach unconditional inoffensiveness by all to all." The Pequod meets a German ship at the same time a whale is spotted. A hunts ensues and the whales is killed but is too heavy and sinks. The whale is old and an easy target. Cruelty is on display.

Chapter 80 - The Nut

March 09, 2022 17:00 - 6 minutes - 4.16 MB

"I would rather feel your spine than your skull, whoever you are. A thin joist of a spine never yet upheld a full and noble soul." Ishmael talks whale phrenology.

Chapter 79 - The Prairie

February 10, 2022 15:00 - 6 minutes - 4.61 MB

"As on your physiognomical voyage you sail round his vast head in your jolly-boat, your noble conceptions of him are never insulted by the reflection that he has a nose to be pulled." We discuss the pseudo science of Physiognomist or Phrenologist, which Ishmael also calls pseudo science and says he doesn't quite understand but tries anyway.

Chapter 78 - Cistern and Buckets

January 30, 2022 03:00 - 10 minutes - 7.14 MB

"...smothered in the very whitest and daintiest of fragrant spermaceti; coffined, hearsed, and tombed in the secret inner chamber and sanctum sanctorum of the whale." Tashtego has a terrible accident. Queequeg saves the day.

Chapter 77 - The Great Heidelburgh Tun

January 04, 2022 21:00 - 4 minutes - 3.19 MB

"Attend now, I pray you, to that marvellous and—in this particular instance—almost fatal operation whereby the Sperm Whale's great Heidelburgh Tun is tapped." We're still talking about the guts of the whale.

Chapter 76 - The Battering-Ram

December 30, 2021 18:00 - 5 minutes - 4.11 MB

"But clear Truth is a thing for salamander giants only to encounter; how small the chances for the provincials then?" Not gonna lie, I have no idea what this chapter was about.

Chapter 75 - The Right Whale's Head—Contrasted View

December 27, 2021 18:00 - 7 minutes - 5.26 MB

"I think his broad brow to be full of a prairie-like placidity, born of a speculative indifference as to death." We're still talking about Whale carcasses.

Chapter 74 - The Sperm Whale's Head—Contrasted View

December 16, 2021 20:00 - 10 minutes - 7.07 MB

"This whale is not dead; he is only dispirited; out of sorts, perhaps; hypochondriac; and so supine, that the hinges of his jaw have relaxed." We examine the difference in whale's heads. Eyes & ears.

Chapter 73 - Stubb and Flask Kill a Right Whale; and Then Have a Talk Over Him

December 16, 2021 05:00 - 14 minutes - 10 MB

"And so flinging off its drippings, that the drops fell like bits of broken glass on the water, while the whale beyond also rose to sight, and once more the boats were free to fly." Flask and Stubb kill and whale and gossip about Fedallah and how much they think he's the devil.

Chapter 72 - The Monkey Rope

October 30, 2021 19:00 - 10 minutes - 7.12 MB

"That unsounded ocean you gasp in, is Life; those sharks, your foes; those spades, your friends; and what between sharks and spades you are in a sad pickle and peril, poor lad." Ishmael holds Queequeg vertically by a rope while he works on cutting up the whale and contemplates their connection. Some ginger tea gets brought out and tossed overboard.

Chapter 71 - The Jeroboam's Story

August 31, 2021 17:00 - 14 minutes - 9.89 MB

"lo! a broad white shadow rose from the sea; by its quick, fanning motion, temporarily taking the breath out of the bodies of the oarsmen." The Pequod encounters another ship, The Jeroboam, which has been taken over by a madman religious fanatic who believes himself to be the archangel Gabriel.

Chapter 70 - The Sphinx

August 27, 2021 17:00 - 6 minutes - 4.3 MB

"That head upon which the upper sun now gleams, has moved amid this world's foundations." The Whale is beheaded and Ahab asks the whale to speak. Which... the whale does not do.

Chapter 69 - The Funeral

August 13, 2021 15:00 - 3 minutes - 2.62 MB

"Thus, while in life the great whale's body may have been a real terror to his foes, in his death his ghost becomes a powerless panic to a world." Thoughts on the death of a whale.

Chapter 69 - The Funeral

August 13, 2021 15:00 - 3 minutes - 2.62 MB

"Thus, while in life the great whale's body may have been a real terror to his foes, in his death his ghost becomes a powerless panic to a world." Thoughts on the death of a whale.

Chapter 68 - The Blanket

August 11, 2021 17:00 - 8 minutes - 5.63 MB

"Oh, man! admire and model thyself after the whale! Do thou, too, remain warm among ice. Do thou, too, live in this world without being of it. Be cool at the equator; keep thy blood fluid at the Pole. Like the great dome of St. Peter's, and like the great whale, retain, O man! in all seasons a temperature of thine own." Ishmael talks about the whale's skin and marvels at its extraordinary qualities.

Chapter 67 - Cutting In

August 04, 2021 16:00 - 5 minutes - 3.68 MB

"The ivory Pequod was turned into what seemed a shamble; every sailor a butcher. You would have thought we were offering up ten thousand red oxen to the sea gods." The sailors cut the blubber off of the whale. A gruesome sight.

Chapter 66 - The Shark Massacre

August 04, 2021 15:00 - 4 minutes - 3.19 MB

"These two mariners, darting their long whaling-spades, kept up an incessant murdering of the sharks*, by striking the keen steel deep into their skulls, seemingly their only vital part." The nearby sharks want a piece of that whale and the sailors must keep them away by stabbing into the water.

Chapter 65 - The Whale as a Dish

July 30, 2021 04:00 - 6 minutes - 4.68 MB

"Who is not a cannibal?" Stubb eats whale. Which may or may not be civilized. And why do we eat the things we do? And who's to say?

Chapter 64 - Stubb's Supper

July 26, 2021 17:00 - 18 minutes - 12.7 MB

"If you have never seen that sight, then suspend your decision about the propriety of devil-worship, and the expediency of conciliating the devil." Stubb teases and torments the ship's cook, Fleece, about the proper way to cook a whale steak. Fleece gives a sermon to the sharks down below.

Chapter 63 - The Crotch

July 19, 2021 16:00 - 3 minutes - 2.55 MB

"Out of the trunk, the branches grow; out of them, the twigs. So, in productive subjects, grow the chapters." We learn about a tool used by whalemen.

Chapter 62 - The Dart

July 15, 2021 17:00 - 3 minutes - 2.73 MB

"The vast majority of failures in the fishery, it has not by any means been so much the speed of the whale as the before described exhaustion of the harpooneer that has caused them." We learn of the fortitude and superhuman strength of the harpooner.

Chapter 61 - Stubb Kills a Whale

July 05, 2021 23:00 - 12 minutes - 8.59 MB

"Whole Atlantics and Pacifics seemed passed as they shot on their way, till at length the whale somewhat slackened his flight." The title says it all.

Weekend Wrap Up #2 (Chapters 24-60)

June 18, 2021 22:00 - 9 minutes - 6.24 MB

What is this book anyway?

Chapter 60 - The Line

June 18, 2021 16:00 - 9 minutes - 6.23 MB

"All men live enveloped in whale-lines. All are born with halters round their necks; but it is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death, that mortals realize the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life." Ishmael describes the horrors and subtleties of the whale-line.

Chapter 59 - Squid

June 17, 2021 22:00 - 6 minutes - 4.53 MB

"Almost rather had I seen Moby Dick and fought him, than to have seen thee, thou white ghost!" A squid is mistaken for Moby Dick.

Chapter 58 - Brit (feat. LaNora Hayden)

June 16, 2021 23:00 - 7 minutes - 5.14 MB

"Consider all this; and then turn to this green, gentle, and most docile earth; consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you not find a strange analogy to something in yourself?" Ishmael pontificates on the cruel and unpredictable nature of land, life, and the sea.

Chapter 57 - Of Whales in Paint; in Teeth; in Wood; in Sheet-Iron; in Stone; in Mountains; in Stars

June 15, 2021 23:00 - 6 minutes - 4.43 MB

Thus at the North have I chased Leviathan round and round the Pole with the revolutions of the bright points that first defined him to me. Ishmael talks about other images of whales.

Chapter 56 - Of the Less Erroneous Pictures of Whales, and the True Pictures of Whaling Scenes

June 14, 2021 18:00 - 8 minutes - 5.69 MB

From the ship, the smoke of the torments of the boiling whale is going up like the smoke over a village of smithies. Ishmael reviews different art and artists who have tried to capture whales in pictures.

Chapter 55 - Of the Monstrous Pictures of Whales

June 11, 2021 17:00 - 11 minutes - 8.04 MB

"Wherefore, it seems to me you had best not be too fastidious in your curiosity touching this Leviathan." Ishmael tells us how everyone does the Whale wrong.

Chapter 54 - The Town-Ho Story (As told at the Golden Inn)

June 11, 2021 00:00 - 45 minutes - 31.3 MB

"The next instant the lower jaw of the mate was stove in his head; he fell on the hatch spouting blood like a whale." In which Herman Melville needs an editor. Haha. Just kidding. A story heard from a person, who then repeated the story in his sleep and Ishmael overhears it, in which, a mutiny occurs on another ship named The Town-Ho, and after that some people get killed by Moby Dick and basically the head mutineer, a BA guy from Buffalo, New York escapes to France. Also, it's told to a bu...

Chapter 53 - The Gam

June 08, 2021 17:00 - 10 minutes - 6.91 MB

"In the case of pirates, say, I should like to know whether that profession of theirs has any peculiar glory about it. It sometimes ends in uncommon elevation, indeed; but only at the gallows." Ishmael tells us about the Gam, a tradition where sailors trade information and chit chat.

Chapter 52 - The Albatross

June 07, 2021 23:00 - 5 minutes - 3.52 MB

"Ahoy there! This is the Pequod, bound round the world! Tell them to address all future letters to the Pacific Ocean!" The Pequod passes another ship, The Albatross and they attempt to brief conversation but nature seems to have other plans.

Chapter 51 - The Spirit-Spout

June 04, 2021 21:00 - 9 minutes - 6.8 MB

"Beneath all its blue blandness, some thought there lurked a devilish charm." The crew all witness a whale spout and there's the feeling like nature is personifying and turning against the ship. Probably nothing to worry about.

Chapter 50 - Ahab's Boat and Crew; Fedallah

June 03, 2021 23:00 - 6 minutes - 4.54 MB

"And all men his descendants, unknowing whence he came, eyed each other as real phantoms, and asked of the sun and the moon why they were created and to what end." Ishmael ponders Ahab's phantom crew of whale hunters.

Chapter 49 - The Hyena

June 02, 2021 21:00 - 5 minutes - 3.83 MB

"There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own." Ishmael rethinks his voyage on the Pequod and makes Queegqueg the inheritor of his possessions.

Chapter 48 - The First Lowering

June 02, 2021 02:00 - 24 minutes - 16.7 MB

"Devils are good fellows enough." They hunt the a pod of whales in the middle of a squall, Ahab has a secret whale-boat crew unbeknownst to the rest of The Pequod until now.

Chapter 47 - The Mat Maker

May 31, 2021 19:00 - 6 minutes - 4.41 MB

"There she blows! there! there! there! she blows! she blows!" The Pequod spots a whale.

Chapter 46 - Surmises

May 27, 2021 19:00 - 7 minutes - 4.94 MB

"To accomplish his object Ahab must use tools; and of all tools used in the shadow of the moon, men are most apt to get out of order." Ahab walks a fine line between dominion over the ship's crew and chaos.

Chapter 45 - The Affidavit

May 27, 2021 16:00 - 21 minutes - 14.7 MB

"For God's sake, be economical with your lamps and candles! not a gallon you burn, but at least one drop of man's blood was spilled for it." Ishmael reviews other times whales have attacked ships.

Chapter 44 - The Chart

May 27, 2021 02:00 - 13 minutes - 8.97 MB

"And when, as was sometimes the case, these spiritual throes in him heaved his being up from its base, and a chasm seemed opening in him, from which forked flames and lightnings shot up, and accursed fiends beckoned him to leap down among them; when this hell in himself yawned beneath him, a wild cry would be heard through the ship; and with glaring eyes Ahab would burst from his state room, as though escaping from a bed that was on fire." Ahab's got a chart of the seas and is also insane. ...

Episodes