The Modern Decameron or This Decameron Life

Episode 10: Imagining the Future

jamiek.anderson@gmail.com (Jamie Anderson) — Wed, 03 Jun 2020 22:05:00 +0000

Episode 9: Intimacy

jamiek.anderson@gmail.com (Jamie Anderson) — Fri, 22 May 2020 18:49:00 +0000

Episode 8: An Artifact from this Time

jamiek.anderson@gmail.com (Jamie Anderson) — Tue, 12 May 2020 16:59:00 +0000

Episode 7: What If There Was No Internet?

jamiek.anderson@gmail.com (Jamie Anderson) — Tue, 05 May 2020 14:42:00 +0000

Episode 6: Community

jamiek.anderson@gmail.com (Jamie Anderson) — Sun, 26 Apr 2020 23:55:00 +0000

Episode 5: Snake Oil, Scams, Pyramid Schemes, and Disinformation

jamiek.anderson@gmail.com (Jamie Anderson) — Fri, 17 Apr 2020 03:38:00 +0000

Episode 4: The Passage of Time

jamiek.anderson@gmail.com (Jamie Anderson) — Fri, 10 Apr 2020 14:06:00 +0000

Episode 3: Surprising Joy

jamiek.anderson@gmail.com (Jamie Anderson) — Sun, 05 Apr 2020 17:43:00 +0000

Episode 2: Checking the News

jamiek.anderson@gmail.com (Jamie Anderson) — Wed, 01 Apr 2020 03:23:00 +0000

Episode 1: Isolation

jamiek.anderson@gmail.com (Jamie Anderson) — Sat, 28 Mar 2020 18:00:00 +0000

Welcome to This Decameron Life

jamiek.anderson@gmail.com (Jamie Anderson) — Fri, 27 Mar 2020 04:07:00 +0000

Welcome to the Modern Decameron, aka, This Decameron Life.

Giovanni Boccaccio, a middle class Italian who lived on the cusp of the Renaissance, wrote The Decameron in the immediate aftermath of the Black Death. Written from 1348 to 1353, it tells the story of ten young Florentines who flee to the countryside. To pass the time, each tells a story per day over ten days, with each day featuring a theme and the stories structured around that theme. The Decameron is sometimes known as The Human Comedy and its hundred stories include a multitude of genres, characters, and incidents - but taken together, they illuminate the lives of ordinary people during Boccaccio’s time against a backdrop of intense social change.

Inspired by this, ten young(ish) people who in March 2020 are under various levels of government control due to novel coronavirus will be telling a tale a day over ten days, with each day featuring a theme. Each theme will be its own episode of, what else in 2020, a podcast.

(Please note that these are not consecutive days - Boccaccio’s noble ladies and lords didn’t have to respond to their boss’s Microsoft Teams requests all day and they still took 4 days off, so we’re going to be taking our time.)