Rimona (she/they) and Han (it/any) dig into the very last chapter of act four of Gideon the Ninth. Alliances shift once again as the final battle rages, and everyone takes turn trying to be the one who gets to self-sacrifice.

The editing is once again a bit rough. No one seemed to mind too much last time, and grad school is grad schooling. <333

Content Warning: death, arachnophobia(?), trauma, flashbacks, stabbing [sexual?], incest(?), gore, suicide

Further Reading:

Kaja Sadowski (2019) Fear is the Mind Killer: How to Build a Training Culture that Fosters Strength and Resilience

Historical Fighting Guide (n.d.) Multiple Opponents and Group Combat

Birgit Kleim, Belinda Graham, Richard A. Bryant, and Anke Ehlers (2013) Capturing Intrusive Re-experiencing in Trauma Survivors' Daily Lives Using Ecological Momentary Assessment. Journal of Abnormal Psychology 122(4):998-1009.

History Hustle (2022). Nestor Makhano: Ukrainian Anarchism and the Free Territory of Ukraine

unexpectedbaggageinitemarea (2026) Tamsyn Muir Oxford Speaker Event.

Star Trek: The Next Generation (1989) "The Survivors" [clip]

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 friend of the show Kristen (any) to re-read chapter 35 of Gideon the Ninth. Gideon overhears a weird conversation. The final battle begins.

Sorry for the rough audio quality this week! Han has an academic article deadline that is looming horribly and we opted for Rough Episode rather than No Episode. Enjoy this behind-the-scenes edition with all of our sorting-out and extra excerpts and ums.

Content Warning: death, death threats, indentured servitude, incest mention, general necromancy badness, cancer, body horror, wounds, blood, genocide [canon]

No readings this week as Han has become temporarily illiterate. Thank you for understanding.

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.

NOTE: Episode re-published due to Haunted. Thank you to those who let us know our file was fucked. You are our true friends.

Rimona Beans (she/they) and Han Koehle (it/any) welcome Dr. Joanna Irina "aoei" Zaitseva-Kinneberg (she/her) for chapter 34 of Gideon the Ninth. The squad journeys into the lab of Cyrus and Valancy. 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 Warning: murder, punching [sexual], fire play, biting, incest mention, Ianthe Tridentarius [canon], assorted body horror, viscera, demon possession, mayonnaise uncles, cannibalism

Further Reading:

Britannica (n.d.) Fresco Painting

Rijen Shrestha; Tanuj Kanchan; Kewal Krishan (2023) Methods of Estimation of Time Since Death

Mariame Kaba (2021) We Do This 'Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice

Mariame Kaba and Shira Hassan (2019) Fumbling Towards Repair: A Workbook for Community Accountability Facilitators

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) reexamine Chapter 35 of Gideon the Ninth. An awkward new coalition emerges in the face of crisis, and it's weird for everybody.

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.