Wayne chooses examples from four works to illustrate good and bad writing: What Strange Paradise, the Giller Prize–winning novel by Omar El Akkad, published in 2021 ◘ Hominids, by Robert J. Sawyer, the multi–award winning Canadian science fiction writer, published in 2003 ◘ A Tale of a Tub, a satire and parody in prose by Jonathan Swift, the 18th-century English writer, published in 1704 ◘ “Why Omicron Is Counterintuitive,” with science writer Carl Zimmer in an interview on the New York Times podcast The Daily, their first podcast of 2022.