Episodes

The world has a northern bias: our politics, culture, and literature all tend to view the northern viewpoint as the default position, leaving the far southern latitudes (Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, and Southern Africa ...

Ever since the novel was invented, women have used it as a platform for sharing ideas about sexual consent. In this episode, Jacke talks to Dr. Zoë McGee about her new book Courting Disaster: Reading Between the Lines in the ...

"And one man in his time plays many parts," wrote Shakespeare in As You Like It , "[h]is acts being seven ages." We all know the feeling of passing from one phase to the next. But what happens when something dramatic mashes t...

In an 1886 letter to his brother, Anton Chekhov delivered some advice about truthfulness in writing. "Don't invent sufferings you have not experienced," he wrote, "and don't paint pictures you have not seen--for a lie in a st...

Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) was one of the most famous American writers of the twentieth century. His plain, economical prose style--inspired by journalism and the King James Bible, with an assist from the Cezannes he viewed...

For thousands of years, writers from ancient China to contemporary meme-makers have demonstrated the power of the short, witty, philosophical phrases known as aphorisms. In this episode, Jacke talks to James Geary ( The World...

Jacke kicks off the episode with an analysis of T.S. Eliot's underappreciated poem of urban alienation, "Preludes." Then scholar and translator Kate Deimling ( The Story of the Marquis de Cressy by Marie-Jeanne Riccoboni ) te...

As fans of the novel know, Frankenstein began with a flash of insight during an ill-fated holiday near Geneva in the summer of 1816, when the young woman then known as Mary Godwin contributed the modern-day Promethean tale to...

When assessing the literature of an era, we tend to think of the works that have made it into the canon - but in so doing, we're in danger of overlooking the many different kinds of books and texts that people were actually r...

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) suffered from poor health for most of his life, and yet he possessed immense vitality. In this episode, Jacke talks to biographer Leo Damrosch ( Storyteller: The Life of Robert Louis Stevens...

In mid-December 2025, the world was shocked by the horrible and tragic news that beloved film director Rob Reiner and his wife Michelle Singer Reiner had been murdered at their home. In this episode, Jacke and Mike celebrate ...

The Ancient Greek historian and general Thucydides (c. 460-400 BCE) called his history of a war between Athens and Sparta "a possession for all time." More than 2,400 years later, his work is still essential reading for anyon...

Robin Lithgow spent her life immersed in the performing arts, including a childhood in the theater and decades spent as an educator and arts administrator. But it wasn't until she read a little-known work by Erasmus that she ...

Civility can help a society overcome tribal loyalties and cooperate for the common good--and when political and religious factions threaten to break a society apart, as in Shakespeare's England, understanding the need for civ...

The Romantic poet Byron (1788-1824) was more than just the scandal-ridden celebrity who was famously dubbed "mad, bad, and dangerous to know"--he was also a restless seeker of an identity to match his personal and artistic se...

The American writer and civil rights activist James Baldwin (1924-1987) spent the second half of his life as a fixture in American intellectual life. But what formed him? In this episode, Jacke talks to Nicholas Boggs, author...

A scrap of Coleridge's handwriting. The sugar that Wordsworth stirred into his teacup. A bracelet made of Mary Shelley's hair... In this episode, Jacke talks to award-winning scholar and literary sleuth Mathelinda Nabugodi ( ...

Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) has long been one of the most famous - and most polarizing - figures in modernism. Was she a trailblazing genius? Or a literary charlatan? Her bestselling memoir of 1933, The Autobiography of Alice ...

In Puritan New England, a young man leaves Faith, his wife, to go into the forest to meet the Devil. It's a story "as deep as Dante," said Herman Melville. In this episode, Jacke reads "Young Goodman Brown," by Nathaniel Hawt...

What do we talk about when we talk about ancient Romans? For many of us, it's typically a fairly narrow slice of history: the toga-clad figures of Cicero and Caesar, perhaps, as their republic shades into empire before collap...

After the publication of her debut novel Wuthering Heights in December of 1847, Emily Brontë - still writing under her pen name Ellis Bell - joined Currer and Acton Bell (her sisters Charlotte and Anne) as promising and intri...

“A sonnet,” said the poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti, “is a moment’s monument.” But who invented the sonnet? Who brought it to prominence? How has it changed over the years? And why does this form continue to be so compelling? In...

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...