Aug. 14, 2026
Episode 823: Shakespeare with James Shapiro
In Episode 823. United States President Abraham Lincoln and his assassin John Wilkes Booth were both deeply immersed in Shakespeare's works. And yet, the conclusions they reached about how best to end tyranny — a feature of both Macbeth and Julius Caesar — could not have been more different. As James Shapiro (Shakespeare in a Divided America) explained to Jacke in a conversation they had in 2023, reading Shakespeare from opposing vantage points is not unusual in American history. What does this mean for our understanding of the past — and our hopes for the future?
Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.
Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,
It seems to me most strange that men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come.
― Shakespeare, Julius Caesar
Episode 831: Chekhov's "The Cherry Orchard" with Rachel Pastan
When times are tough, can literature help? After sharing an email from a listener, Jacke talks to author Rachel Pastan about her novel We're So Lucky to Live Here, in which a woman copes with a tragic loss by staging a production of Chekhov's The Ch…
Episode 830: Stendhal with Hadley Suter
We often say it's important for a person to be "authentic," but what does that mean? Why is that necessarily a good thing? In Episode 830 of the History of Literature Podcast, Jacke talks to author Hadley Suter (Becoming Stendhal: The Performance o…
