Episodes

Following Jacke's discussion with Stephen Mitchell about the first Christmas, Jacke takes a look at a special letter by Rainer Maria Rilke (which Stephen Mitchell translated). In this letter, written in Rome on December 23, 1...

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...

Jacke talks to Mike Palindrome about his work on the "Tolstoy Together" project sponsored by Yiyun Li and A Public Space, along with some other thoughts about reading great books on Twitter. THEN Jacke responds to the incredi...

The English novelist Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966) was regarded by many as the most brilliant satirical novelist of his time. A self-proclaimed curmudgeon, for whom the Conservative Party was not conservative enough, Waugh convert...

Your humble podcaster-squirrel is back! Jacke considers the legacy of Charles M. Schulz, creator of Charlie Brown and Peanuts , and reflects on the difference between being "best known for" and "known for" an artistic endeavo...

What happened in the Sixties? How did singers of popular music transform from mere entertainers to the poetic bards of their generation? Were these songs literature? If so, what does that mean? And if not, what exactly are th...

Born into a remarkable family full of talented artists, the Irish poet and playwright William Butler Yeats (1865-1938) nevertheless stood out. Deeply immersed in mysticism and the occult - along with Irish politics, the devel...

Jacke talks to journalist Tom Roston about his new biography of Kurt Vonnegut, The Writer's Crusade: Kurt Vonnegut and the Many Lives of Slaughterhouse Five . PLUS Jacke reads excerpts from one of Vonnegut's most famous speec...

Feeling grateful, Jacke rummages through the literary storage trunk to find works on gratitude by five poets and essayists: Maya Angelou, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Sharon Olds, Henry David Thoreau, and W,S. Merwin. Enjoy! Help sup...

It's a good day for cooking! First up: Scott Carter, author of the play Discord: The Gospel According to Thomas Jefferson, Charles Dickens, and Count Leo Tolstoy , joins Jacke for a look at the gospel as updated by Leo …

During her stormy and mysterious life, Eliza Haywood (1693?-1756) was one of the most prolific writers in England. Her "amatory fictions" were unapologetically sensationalistic, earning her the opprobrium of her mostly male c...

In her new book Read Until You Understand , beloved professor Farah Jasmine Griffin entwines memoir, history, and art in exploring the culture of Black genius and the lessons and legacies of Black lives and literature. In thi...

It's a literary feast! National bestselling author Bethany C. Morrow joins Jacke for a discussion of her novel So Many Beginnings: A Little Women Remix , in which four young Black sisters come of age during the American Civil...

"I could not write a girls' story," Louisa May Alcott protested after a publisher made a specific request that she do so, "knowing little about any but my own sisters and always preferring boys." But she agreed to try, and …

Brilliant and contentious, the Swiss-born political philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (`1712-1768) is one of the key figures of the Enlightenment, with a fame and influence that continues to this day. But although we know him...

Robert Louis Stevenson's classic adventure Treasure Island gave the world a number of familiar pirate tropes, like parrots on shoulders and X marks the spot. But it also helped lock us into a somewhat limited view of life on ...

Even the best biographical depictions of Oscar Wilde often skip over the years he spent in prison, perhaps because the episode is so sad and painful. But in doing so, they miss the profundity of his life and writings. In …

The American poet Dana Gioia calls Charles Baudelaire "the first modern poet," adding "In both style and content, his provocative, alluring, and shockingly original work shaped and enlarged the imagination of later poets, not...

The writer, philosopher, and trailblazing feminist Mary Wollstonecraft is perhaps best known as the mother of the author of Frankenstein , but this amazing figure deserves more attention than a line in Mary Shelley's biograph...

Mysteries! Beloved by adults and children alike, it's hard to imagine a genre with a more universal appeal. But what makes mysteries so compelling? What is it about mysteries - and human beings, for that matter - that makes m...

A special guest stops by to help Jacke talk about life, literature, and one of the world's great masterpieces: The Metamorphosis , by Franz Kafka. Hope you enjoy! Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofli...

As a child growing up in Newark, New Jersey in the 1930s and 40s, Philip Milton Roth (1933-2018) never thought about being a writer. By the time he died, he had become one of the most famous and celebrated figures …

William Sidney Porter (1862-1910) packed a lot of life into his 47 years, traveling from a childhood in North Carolina to work as a rancher and bank teller in Texas to a desperate escape to Honduras, where he hoped to …

John Marcher has been waiting all his life for something rare and strange to happen to him - something that will leap out of the darkness and attack him like a Beast in a Jungle. His friend May Bartram has …