Podcast Episodes
Back to Search
‘Dark Renaissance’ historian on how Christopher Marlowe paved the way for Shakespeare
The Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe is known as Shakespeare’s greatest rival. But in his new book Dark Renaissance, historian Stephen Gree…
6 months, 4 weeks ago
‘Beyond Fast’ chronicles one coach’s unlikely revolution in high school cross-country
When Sean Brosnan started coaching the Newbury Park High School cross-country team, the school hadn't qualified for a state championship in 25 years.…
6 months, 4 weeks ago
In his new novel ‘The Secret of Secrets,’ Dan Brown takes on human consciousness
Dan Brown, author of The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons, is out with his sixth book starring fictional Harvard professor Robert Langdon. In The …
6 months, 4 weeks ago
‘Long Way Down’ and ‘The Hate U Give’ are modern classics about gun violence
The final episode in our Back to School series focuses on two contemporary books that tell stories about gun violence. First, Jason Reynolds’ 2017 no…
7 months ago
What Toni Morrison learned from revisiting five of her most-read novels
Arguably, no high school reading list is complete without one of Toni Morrison’s books. In today’s episode, we look back at a 2004 conversation betwe…
7 months ago
Sandra Cisneros’ ‘The House on Mango Street’ was born from a feeling of displacement
Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street is a series of vignettes drawn from the experiences of a Mexican-American girl living in Chicago. Since it…
7 months ago
In her translation of ‘The Odyssey,’ Emily Wilson aimed for ‘a crystalline clarity’
In 2017, Emily Wilson became the first woman to translate Homer’s The Odyssey into English – more than three millennia after the epic’s inception. In…
7 months ago
Jhumpa Lahiri says the phrase ‘Interpreter of Maladies’ came to her in grad school
It’s Back to School week at NPR’s Book of the Day, which means we’re looking back at interviews with authors who may have shown up on your high schoo…
7 months ago
‘2024’ and ‘From the Clinics to the Capitol’ dissect opposing political movements
Today’s episode features two books that dissect very different case studies in politics: Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign and the anti-abortion m…
7 months, 1 week ago
In Meg Medina’s new young adult novel, a 13-year-old girl becomes a sea ghost
Meg Medina’s new young adult novel begins with a fall: Graciela, a 13-year-old-girl, is blown off a cliff and sucked into the bottom of the sea. A ce…
7 months, 1 week ago