Episodes

Novelist Fred Waitzkin ( Searching for Bobby Fischer ) stops by to discuss Jack Kerouac, Ernest Hemingway, and his new novel Anything Is Good , which tells the story of a childhood friend who was a genius - and who ended up l...

Women haven't always been given an equal chance to contribute to literature - but they were writing nevertheless, sometimes just for themselves. In this episode, Jacke talks to Sarah Gristwood ( Secret Voices: A Year of Women...

Early modern poets - John Milton, Edmund Spenser, Aemilia Lanyer, Abraham Cowley - lived in a world where theological questions were as hotly contested as political struggles over issues like empire, gender, civil war, and po...

The relationship between literature and "madwomen" has deep roots. In this episode, Jacke talks to author Suzanne Scanlon ( Committed: On Meaning and Madwomen ) about her efforts to reclaim the idea of the madwoman as a templ...

What a treat! First, Jacke talks to Nicholson Baker, an author he's been reading for the past three decades, about Finding a Likeness: How I Got Somewhat Better at Art , Baker's deeply personal account of his journey learning...

Families can provide wonderful material for a writer, but they can also be tricky to navigate. How do you make your stories of home interesting to other people? What's too personal? What's not personal enough? In this episode...

Books are beloved objects, earning lots of praise as amazing pieces of technology and essential contributors to a civilized society. And yet, we often take these cultural miracles for granted. Who's been making these things f...

Fearless and fiercely intelligent, the nineteenth-century American feminist Margaret Fuller was "the radiant genius and fiery heart" of the Transcendentalists, the group of New Englanders who helped launch a fledgling nation ...

Scottish writer John Buchan is perhaps best known for his pioneering thriller The Thirty-Nine Steps , the source material for one of Alfred Hitchcock's first great films. But as his biographer (and granddaughter) Ursula Bucha...

Why do we read John Keats and not one of his well-regarded peers? Why do some authors disappear into the sands of time - while others, virtually unknown in their day, become posthumous household names? In this episode, Jacke ...

Dear listeners: What kind of life are you living? What's your relationship between your body, mind, and soul? And what can you learn about your deepest self as you get older? In this episode, Jacke talks to award-winning Fren...

First published in 1980, Between Dog and Wolf by Sasha Sokolov is one of the most acclaimed Russian novels of the twentieth century. But the book, with its dazzling wordplay, shifting-sand narration, and other literary pyrote...

Can novelists make a difference in the world? Of course we know they can - we've seen plenty of examples. But how does it happen? And what are the challenges a twenty-first century novelist might face when hoping to bring abo...

Why do we fall in love? Why do we fall out of love? And how can literature shape the way we travel these emotional and romantic landscapes? In this episode, Jacke talks to University of Oxford professor Sophie Ratcliffe about...

She's been called Scandinavia's best loved author - but "author" only begins to describe Tove Jansson's genius. Famous worldwide as the creator of the Moomin stories, she balanced her talents as a painter, cartoonist, illustr...

Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov... the familiar Russian names are at the pinnacle of world literature. How did this happen? Was it merely a happy accident? Did events conspire to bring it about? In this episode, Jacke talks to R...

Born more than two centuries ago, Ralph Waldo Emerson has long been recognized as a giant of nineteenth-century American letters. But what can he offer readers today? In this episode, Jacke talks to author James Marcus, autho...

We humans imprint ourselves on our surroundings - and they, in turn, have the power to affect us. In this episode, Jacke talks to Gareth Russell ( The Palace: From the Tudors to the Windsors, 500 Years of History at Hampton C...

It's the start of a new hundred episodes! Fresh off her tour for her new novel The Road from Belhaven , superguest Margot Livesey joins Jacke for a discussion of mistakes in the novels of Thomas Hardy. Then Jacke tells Margot...

It's another milestone for the History of Literature Podcast! Jacke celebrates the six hundredth episode of the podcast with a return to one of his old favorites, the "harmless drudge" himself, Dr. Johnson, with the help of J...

While avant-garde filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky might be most famous for the wildly ambitious version of Dune that never got made - in spite of having actors and artists like Orson Welles, Salvador Dalí, Mick Jagger, Pink Fl...

Charmian Kittredge London (1871-1955) may be best known as the wife of the famous American writer Jack London, but she was herself a literary trailblazer - and the epitome of a modern woman. In this episode, Jacke talks to bi...

Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgaard (b. 1968) became known in his home country - or at least its literary circles - when he put out two well-received novels in the late 1990s. But it was the publication of his six-volume aut...

It's a literary smorgasbord! First, Jacke dives into the recent news of the surprising connection between Taylor Swift and Emily Dickinson. Next, he welcomes Mike Palindrome, President of the Literature Supporters Club, for a...