Episodes

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...

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...