
Wake Island is a friendly ghost in the haunted house of the internet. Hosts David Leo Rice and Paul K explore the darkening undercurrents of contemporary culture, where technology, mythology, media, photography, AI, and fiction overlap. wakeisland.substack.com
| Publishes | Twice monthly | Episodes | 57 | Founded | 7 years ago |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Number of Listeners | Categories | BooksArtsFiction | |||

This week on Wake Island, we spoke with Adam Axler, author of American Triage: From 9/11 to Fahrenheit 451, a memoir about more than two decades inside American emergency medicine. Adam was a paramedic at Ground Zero and went on to spend years workin... more
Our guest today is Gideon Jacobs, a writer, performer and artist. I actually met Gideon over ten years ago when he was the creative director at Magnum and I was a photo editor at TIME. We were both working inside institutions built around photography... more
Wake Island is back. It’s been a long hiatus, a lot of life changes and transitions… the usual upheavals that seem to have hit everyone over the last year or so.
We’re kicking things off with past guest of the show, Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh, a philoso... more
Today’s guest is Dr. Teodor Mitew. He’s a systems thinker, historian, and digital media scholar at the University of Sydney, and the author of a new book called The Red Queen Trap: Complexity, Collapse, and the Myth of the Future, along with a volu... more
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Was one of my fav parasocial pod relationships
Love it.
Amazing podcast on transgressive literature, and how culture/politics are changing/darkening/morphing. Paul & David are exceptional hosts, so knowledgeable and great interviewers who listen so closely! Lots of great references and found so many new books and films through this
A peak behind the curtain of culture. Wake Island dissects the modern world through film, literature, art, and journalism, exemplifying the curiosity of spirit desperately needed for these dark and weird times.
Best Lit pod out there. Amazing guests, genuinely insightful conversations. Tomk
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Recent interactions between the hosts and their guests.
Listeners, social reach, demographics and more for this podcast.
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A conversation-driven show exploring the dark undercurrents of contemporary culture through philosophy, literature, technology, and art. Episodes mix systems thinking, myth, and historical imagination to interrogate how digital culture, geopolitics, and creative media shape our reality, often linking ancient motifs to modern tech and political dynamics. Noteworthy is the show's penchant for cross-disciplinary dialogue, probing archetypes, and provocative ideas (e.g., myth as a high-compression algorithm, neo-medieval dynamics in AI, and unconventional book culture), which tends to attract listeners who enjoy deeply reflective, idea-forward conversations with authors, artists, and thinkers.
Overall, the program likely appeals to curious, we... more
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Wake Island launched 7 years ago and published 57 episodes to date. You can find more information about this podcast including rankings, audience demographics and engagement in our podcast database.
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Recent guests on Wake Island include:
1. Adam Axler
2. Gideon Jacobs
3. Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh
4. Theodor Mitew
5. Derek McCormack
6. Roddy Bottum
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