Amateur enthusiast Jacke Wilson journeys through the history of literature, from ancient epics to contemporary classics. (Episodes are not in chronological order - feel free to jump in wherever you'd like!)
Aesop's fables - including such classics as "The Tortoise and the Hare," "The Fox and the Grapes," and "The Ant and the Grasshopper" - are among the most familiar and best-loved stories in the world. But who was Aesop? Why w…
It's hard to imagine now, but the United States government wasn't always hostile or indifferent to the arts. In fact, from 1935 to 1939, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal Government responded to the Great Depres…
Medieval manuscripts are so wondrously beautiful they deserve comparison with the world's finest works of art. But what lays behind the production of these manuscripts? We might think of rows of monks, patiently toiling away…
Yes, he's the father of English poetry, and yes, he's perhaps best known today for bawdy tales like the Wife of Bath. But who was Geoffrey Chaucer? How did he navigate life during one of the most turbulent periods of English…
Bibliophiles everywhere know the sweet feeling of getting lost in a book. And like all good literary snobs, we tend to think that full immersion requires a distraction-free relationship between reader and text. But was it al…
For fifty years, Nobel Prize winner Thomas Mann (1875-1955) lived his life as Germany's preeminent novelist and one of Europe's most respected intellectuals. In this episode, Jacke examines the truth behind the public image,…