Episodes

Stephen Mitchell has translated or adapted some of the world's most beautiful and spiritually rich texts, including The Gospel According to Jesus, The Book of Job, Gilgamesh, Tao Te Ching, Bhagavad Gita, The Iliad, The Odysse...

In this holiday-themed episode, a sentimental Jacke takes a look at Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol (1843), and the creation of Ebeneezer Scrooge. A version of this episode first aired in December 2020. That episode has no...

Francis Ford Coppola's masterpiece The Godfather routinely tops lists of the greatest films ever made - and when it doesn't, it's often because its sequel, The Godfather II , has replaced it. In this episode, Jacke talks to a...

How well can we know someone through the objects they encountered? In this episode, Jacke talks to Kathryn Sutherland, Senior Research fellow at St. Anne's College, Oxford, about her new book Jane Austen in 41 Objects , which...

In 1949, American critic Lionel Trilling, writing in the New Yorker , was quick to recognize the achievement of George Orwell's new novel. "[P]rofound, terrifying, and wholly fascinating," he said. 1984 "confirms its author i...

Did you think we already knew everything there was to know about Virginia Woolf? Think again! In this episode, Jacke talks to scholar and editor Urmila Seshagiri about The Life of Violet: Three Early Stories , which presents ...

At the start of Shakespeare's famous tragedy, King Lear promises to divide his kingdom based on his daughters’ professions of love, but he portions it out before hearing all of their answers. For Nan Da, a professor of Englis...

Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593) was born into relative obscurity and died in mysterious circumstances at the age of 29. And yet, somehow this ambitious cobbler's son brought about a spectacular explosion of English literature...

When Jacke started the podcast in 2015, he decided to privilege books that were at least fifty years old. (Longtime listeners will know he's made a few exceptions, but for the most part, that's been the policy.) Last month, t...

Charlotte Brontë wasn't born the eldest child, but she was thrust into a leadership role at the age of ten, as the Brontë children dealt with the tragic deaths of their mother and two eldest sisters. How did this affect their...

In September 2022, a young Kurdish woman, Mahsa Jîna Amini, died after being beaten by police officers who arrested her for not adhering to the Islamic Republic’s dress code. Her death galvanized thousands of Iranians—mostly ...

It's the 750th episode of the History of Literature, and what better way to celebrate than to talk some Hemingway with repeat guest Mark Cirino? In this episode, Jacke talks to Mark about Hemingway's classic love-and-war nove...

When Hamlet, in his famous soliloquy, pondered the "dread of something after death, / the undiscovered country," he noted that such thoughts "puzzles the will." (Earlier editions of the play had this as a "hope of something a...

Katherine Mansfield's writing, said Virginia Woolf, "was the only writing I was ever jealous of." In this episode, Jacke talks to author Gerri Kimber about Katherine Mansfield: A Hidden Life , which explores the life and work...

Dmitry Ivanovich Khvostov (1757-1835) might be the worst poet who ever lived. Pathologically prolific and delusional dedicated to a craft for which he had no talent, he continued to write and publish his poetry despite the pl...

Author Devoney Looser may be a mild-mannered English professor to most people, but roller derby fans know her as Stone Cold Jane Austen, her smashmouth alter ego. In this episode, Devoney tells Jacke about her new book Wild f...

In the spring of 2022, Jacke dropped everything to plummet into one of the strangest poems he had ever read, "Goblin Market" by Christina Rossetti (1830-1894). The result was a two-part episode that never quite found its home...

The year is 1816, and 18-year-old Mary Shelley has fled London with her lover, Percy Shelley, and her sister, Claire. They're on their way to visit Lord Byron's villa in Lake Geneva, Switzerland - and to change the course of ...

An early encounter with one of the most famous people in the world initiated Jack Zipes into the world of fairy tales - and he never looked back. In this episode, Jacke talks to the fairy tale expert about his book Buried Tre...

It's October, the perfect month to celebrate the master of mystery and the macabre. In this episode, Jacke talks to author Richard Kopley about his book Edgar Allan Poe: A Life , a comprehensive critical biography that combin...

In 1945, the Nobel Committee awarded its prize for literature to Gabriela Mistral (1889-1957) "for her lyric poetry which, inspired by powerful emotions, has made her name a symbol of the idealistic aspirations of the entire ...

In this episode, Jacke talks to author David Denby about his new book, Eminent Jews: Bernstein, Brooks, Friedan, Mailer , a group biography (loosely inspired by Lytton Strachey's Eminent Victorians ) that describes how four l...

Thanks to his invention of Europe's first typographic printing method, and his pioneering work on the first printed Bible, the fifteenth-century German inventor Johannes Gutenberg has a fame and reputation that continues to t...

Emily Brontë only published one full-length book before dying at the tragically young age of 30. But that book, Wuthering Heights , which tells the story of obsessive and vengeful love on the rugged moors of Yorkshire, is sti...