Podcast
The Awful Shadow: Unblocking the Self / Unboxing Big-Box Academia
Hosted by Jack Stamps · EN
THE AWFUL SHADOW is a restless memoir of tragedy, perseverance, personal restoration, and the unveiling of one public university’s ugly underbelly. Told through shifting, often colorful and humorous narrative styles and allusions to gothic fantasy video game elements, the author recounts a five-year odyssey through the death of his daughter, a dysfunctional workplace, a prolonged lawsuit settled out of court, crumbled relationships, a near death experience, spiritual transformation, music composition, and more.
At the heart of THE AWFUL SHADOW is a slick, university-style textbook called ACADEMIA CULPA that teaches specific administrative transgressions, woven from legal discovery, personal accounts, interviews, open records, and graphical data.
THE AWFUL SHADOW concludes with a near-death experience, an outpouring of renegade prayers, and a new, sober view of a world anxiously grappling with its own transformation.
21episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
Chapter 23 - The Eyes
Sep 1200:38:30Tap to summarizeA haunted walk through the origins of “The Eyes of Texas”—told as a fantasy with musical set pieces. John Henry, Alice, and Old Man Joshua pull the veil off a campus anthem; a paper tyrant named Jaihartd tries to sell “comfort” over truth.Content noteDiscussion of blackface/minstrelsy, racist caricature, and institutional whitewashing.
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Chapter 22 - BRAC-Listed!
Sep 800:33:25Tap to summarizeIn this searing and darkly satirical chapter, Jack peels back the layers of secrecy surrounding a big-box university's Behavioral Risk Assessment Committee (BRAC)—an obscure, almost mythological campus entity with no visible public charter and yet, somehow, the power to investigate faculty and staff without their knowledge or consent.What begins as a Kafkaesque tangle of open records requests turns into something even more disturbing: a bureaucratic specter capable of branding a man a threat based on bolded email hearsay, surreal musical titles, and cartoonishly bad assumptions. This episode dives deep into:🕵️♂️ Hidden administrative surveillance🎵 The criminalization of instrumental music📜 Open records requests as weapons of clarity🧠 Mental health, family loss, and the long shadow of post-lawsuit grief🍫 A PayDay bar, a piñata, and a lanyard collection all make cameosPlus: A faculty member accuses Jack of “stalking by SoundCloud,” a dean drops a pizza-parlor-pedophile punchline, and the university Police confuse him with his own father. It’s absurd, it’s infuriating—and it’s all true.With help from fellow whistleblower and historian Alberto Martinez, this episode isn’t just a personal reckoning; it’s a surgical dissection of a shadow system that treats reputation as risk and satire as threat.🟧 Trigger warning: gaslighting, defamation, uninvestigated accusations, and the misuse of mental health frameworks as instruments of silencing.🟦 Content warning: brief discussion of depression, injury, and grief.
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Chapter 21: The Awful Shadow
Jul 800:25:19Tap to summarizeAt the base of every sacred tower lies a crypt. In this episode, we descend beneath the surface of university branding into the procedural catacombs where faculty complaints are sorted, neutralized, and entombed. Drawing parallels between the Erdtree of Elden Ring and the University of Texas Tower, Dr. Jack Stamps uncovers the silent mechanics of complaint triage—a system designed not to resolve harm, but to contain it.
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CHAPTER 20: ACADEMIA CULPA: SYLLABUS AND COURSE OVERVIEW
Jun 2600:50:24Tap to summarizeSeason 2 opens with a fictional university course called Academia Culpa: The Fundamentals of Big-Box University Autocracy. Delivered like a deadpan syllabus reading, the episode slowly reveals itself as a satire of institutional power and academic gaslighting. Policy language becomes a weapon, and phrases like “collegiality” and “autonomy” start to glitch and unravel. Picking up where Season 1 left off—after grief, dismissal, and spiritual rupture—this episode shifts focus from personal fallout to the cold machinery that caused it.
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Benediction 1: Sugarbean
Jan 17, 202500:05:02Tap to summarizeMore on the dream I had on the beach in Florida.
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Chapter 19: Bells Across the Hours, Bells Across the Years
Jan 17, 202500:21:34Tap to summarizeIn the Season 1 finale, as a 78 year old man, I look back upon the toll of grief, fractured memories, and the haunting regret of past decisions, set against carillon bells in academia. As the echoes fade, this episode closes one chapter while hinting at Part 2, a fake textbook called ACADEMIA CULPA: The Fundamentals of Big-Box University Autocracy.
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Chapter 18: MR. BUBBLES: A Performed TED Talk in One Act
Jan 16, 202500:12:14Tap to summarizeWhere the mundane transforms into the divine and back again. Amid laughter, revelations, and feline-inspired wisdom, our charismatic speaker-turned-academic dean, introduces the ultimate fusion of empathy, design thinking—delivering a masterclass in transcending the inbox to touch the soul.
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Chapter 17: RE: PLAUSIBLE DENIABILITY
Jan 14, 202500:07:30Tap to summarizeA satirical look at a meeting where I was informed of the university’s decision not to renew my faculty contract. Laced with bureaucratic empathy, backhanded compliments, and corporate doublespeak, the conversation reveals the performative nature of leadership and accountability in academia.
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Chapter 16: Big Boss Cutscene: THE SNAKE OIL QUEEN, née Rennala, Queen of the Full Moon
Jan 10, 202500:04:41Tap to summarizeModeled after Rennala, Queen of the Full Moon from Elden Ring, I step into a bluish corridor of academia, where towering tomes and spectral scholars surround the Snake Oil Queen—the dean who ended my academic career. As her gilded defenses and cursed knowledge assail me, I face a surreal boss battle against the guile, betrayal, and institutional power she wields.
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Chapter 15: Pull-String
Jan 6, 202500:25:09Tap to summarizeA surgical look at a meeting with an academic administrator that unfolds as a theater of hushed whispers, veiled threats, and selectively spun narratives—a performance of forced submission thinly veiled as a promotion discussion.
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