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Torah Obscura Radio Hour

Torah Obscura Radio Hour

By: Michael Diamond
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Season 1, Chapters 1 to 8, presents ”A Mobster’s Midrash” read by the author, Michael Diamond. A gangster version of the Bible set in the 1970s/80s worlds of music and mobsters, A Mobster’s Midrash is a surreal fusion of mob‑family saga, retold mythologies, and cosmic satire. The shamus narrator tangles with crime syndicates, resurrected deities, musicians and misfits. Across its chapters, it reframes biblical and mythological archetypes—Isis, Osiris, pillars of fire and cloud—inside a comic‑noir world of clubs, Jersey highways, Union shakedowns, and psychedelic concert caravans. It’s an epic exploration of the art of the story—sacred, profane, and personal—imagined, broken, and recast.

Season 2, chapters 9 to 16, presents "The Proceedings of the Academy of the Dream Society read by the author, Michael Diamond. The narrator, Boss Joey, or is it Jakey, picks up the narrative from the first book of the trilogy and takes it to the next plane, the world of dreams, the Interworld, the Bardo, though some would call it Purgatory. It is a sprawling, surreal, and metafictional autobiographical narrative that blends personal history with mythic symbolism, mystical lore, dream logic, and humorous reimaginings of religious and cultural traditions. The narrator moves between memory, fantasy, and metaphor as he encounters figures from the “Dream Society,” revisits key moments in his life, and reflects on identity, spirituality, suffering, and transformation. It a visionary epic—part memoir, part dream‑journal, part satire—with recurring motifs of initiation, wandering, healing, and the search for sovereignty.

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Episodes
  • Chapter 16: In the Bathhouse
    Feb 25 2026

    Your wandering narrator drifts through surreal encounters—from a clarinet-playing Mustard Man and wetsuited healers to ritual bathhouses and crypts—while undergoing mystic aquatic therapies and searching for meaning in old songs and books.

    Through visits to mikvahs, boneyards, and desert memories, he unravels connections to past mentors, a mysterious patron named Jake the Protector, and a plan for the Temple at the Edge of the Mind.

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    40 mins
  • Chapter 15: The Sum of All Assassinations
    Feb 9 2026

    This episode blends humorous and mystical reflections on "surviving apocalypse," offering improvised survival tips, warnings about enslavement to machines, and encounters with The League of Metaphysical Escape Artists.

    Interwoven are personal memories of a friend’s death and memorial, vivid dream-visions, and teachings about the mechanism of reunion and rebirth—the ambrosial assembly of souls and bodies—culminating in a call to assemble and return.

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    38 mins
  • Chapter 14: The Incredible Shrinking Emperor
    Feb 8 2026

    An irreverent, autobiographical address to the Academy of the Dream Society: the narrator recounts decades of spinal surgeries, chronic pain, and the surprising atrophy of his gluteus maximus, and explores attempts at recovery from TENS therapy to further repairs.

    Woven through the medical narrative are playful metaphysical digressions, vivid local scenes like Gracie's Harbor, and reflections on culture, healing, and the strange economy of bodily loss and restoration.

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    35 mins
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