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Episodes

April 10, 2023

502 Persuasion by Jane Austen | My last book with Stephen Dobranski

Harold Bloom called Persuasion "the perfect novel." Virginia Woolf said "In Persuasion , Jane Austen is beginning to discover that the world is larger, more mysterious, and more romantic than she supposed." In this episode, t...

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April 6, 2023

501 The Naked World (with Irina Mashinski)

Irina Mashinski is a bilingual Russophone American writer, poet, essayist, teacher, and translator, whose works include Giornata and eleven books of poetry and essays in Russian. She is also the co-editor of The Penguin Book ...

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April 3, 2023

500 Episode 500! Meg White, Listener Emails, Johnson and Boswell, and…

It's Episode 500! Jacke shares some thoughts on Meg White's drumming, Boswell and Johnson, and living in Taiwan. Then author Margot Livesey ( The Boy in the Field , The Flight of Gemma Hardy ) joins Jacke for a discussion …

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March 30, 2023

499 Wilde Nights and Robber Barons (with Laura Lee)

Jacke talks to author Laura Lee about her new book Wilde Nights and Robber Barons: The Story of Maruice Schwabe, the Man Behind Oscar Wilde's Downfall, Who with a Band of False Aristocrats Swindled the World . LAURA LEE is …

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March 27, 2023

498 A New Novel by a Legendary Independent Filmmaker (with John Sayle…

Jacke talks to legendary independent filmmaker John Sayles ( Lone Star , Passion Fish ) about his new novel Jamie MacGillivray: The Renegade's Journey , which tells a sweeping story of romance and revolution in eighteenth cen...

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March 23, 2023

497 The Art of War by Sun Tzu

By any measure, the ancient Chinese military treatise The Art of War has had an astonishing literary history, proving itself over two and a half millennia to be one of the world's most essential and enduring books. In this ep...

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March 20, 2023

496 The Wife of Bath (with Marion Turner)

The Wife of Bath, arguably the first ordinary and recognizably real woman in English literature, has obsessed readers from Shakespeare to James Joyce, Voltaire to Pasolini, Dryden to Zadie Smith. Few literary characters have ...

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March 16, 2023

495 The Creative Spark (with Joe Skinner)

How do today's master's create their art? In this episode, Jacke talks to Joe Skinner, producer and host of the podcast American Masters: Creative Spark , about the narrative interviews he's conducted with iconic artists abou...

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March 13, 2023

494 Three Roads Back - How Emerson, Thoreau, and William James Respon…

In a final powerful book , acclaimed literary biographer Robert Richardson told the story of how Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and William James dealt with personal tragedies early in their careers. In this episod...

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March 9, 2023

493 Catullus - The Poet of Love and Hate

He loved and he hated. Other than that, not much is known about the life of Catullus, who scandalized the late Roman Republic with his bawdy poems, his aching love for the upper-class married woman he called "Lesbia," and his...

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March 6, 2023

492 Nabokov Noir (with Luke Parker)

After the October Revolution in 1917, a teenaged Vladimir Nabokov and his family, part of the Russian nobility, sought exile in Western Europe, eventually settling in Berlin, where Vladimir lived for fifteen years. His life t...

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March 2, 2023

491 Elizabeth Bishop (with Megan Marshall)

Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979) was one of the twentieth century's most accomplished and celebrated poets. In this episode, Jacke talks to Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Megan Marshall about her personal connection to Bishop,...

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March 1, 2023

Introducing YE GODS WITH SCOTT CARTER

Introducing YE GODS WITH SCOTT CARTER

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Feb. 27, 2023

490 Writing Hit Songs, Rewriting Charles Dickens, and Murdering Your …

Jacke talks to Edgar Award-winning novelist, Tony Award-winning playwright, and legendary story songwriter Rupert Holmes about writing pop song landmarks ("Escape (The Piña Colada Song))," Broadway whodunit musicals ( The Mys...

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Feb. 23, 2023

489 Schopenhauer (aka The Tunnel and The Hole)

"It is difficult to find happiness within oneself," said the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), "but it is impossible to find it anywhere else." In spite of his pessimism - or perhaps because of it - Schopenh...

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Feb. 20, 2023

488 William Faulkner (with Carl Rollyson)

Jacke talks to "serial biographer" Carl Rollyson about his new two-volume biography of William Faulkner, The Life of William Faulkner: The Past Is Never Dead, 1897-1934 (Volume 1) and The Life of William Faulkner: This Alarmi...

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Feb. 16, 2023

487 Bond, the Beatles, and the British Psyche (with John Higgs)

On October 5, 1962, two items were released, hardly newsworthy at the time. One was Dr. No , the first James Bond film, and the other was Love Me Do , the first Beatles recording. Over the next sixty years, …

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Feb. 13, 2023

486 The Creative Partnership of Willa Cather & Edith Lewis (with Meli…

What was Willa Cather's life really like? Was she - as is often thought - a solitary artist, painstakingly crafting her novels about the Great Plains? Or did she actually have a robust creative partnership with another woman,...

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Feb. 9, 2023

485 Reading Pleasures - Everyday Black Living in Early America (with …

"In the early United States, a Black person committed an act of resistance simply by reading and writing. Yet we overlook that these activities also brought pleasure." In this episode, Jacke talks to Dr. Tara A. Bynum about h...

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Feb. 6, 2023

484 Reading John Milton (with Stephen Dobranski)

John Milton is often regarded as second only to Shakespeare in the history of English verse - and his epic poem, Paradise Lost , is viewed by many as second to none. His literary achievements are all the more remarkable …

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Feb. 2, 2023

483 Margaret Fuller (with Megan Marshall)

In her lifetime, Margaret Fuller (1810-1850) was widely acknowledged as the best read person - male or female - in New England. Her landmark work, Woman in the Nineteenth Century , is considered the first full-length treatmen...

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Jan. 30, 2023

482 Moby Dick - 10 Essential Questions (Part Two)

Is Moby-Dick truly the Great American Novel? How did contemporary critics miss it? When (and how) was the book rediscovered? Jacke goes through all this and more, as he continues the countdown of Top 10 Essential Questions ab...

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Jan. 26, 2023

481 Moby Dick - 10 Essential Questions (Part One)

Here we go! Moby-Dick; or, the Whale (1851) by Herman Melville is one of the greatest - and strangest - novels you will ever read. Call it what you will - a literary leviathan, an intellectual chowder, an early entry …

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Jan. 23, 2023

480 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (with Ritchie Robertson)

In 1878, critic Matthew Arnold wrote, "Goethe is the greatest poet of modern times... because having a very considerable gift for poetry, he was at the same time, in the width, depth, and richness of his criticism of life, by...

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