Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchEd Park, "Three Tenses" (Random House, 2026)
Three Tenses (Random House, 2026) by Ed Park is not quite a memoir, not quite fiction, not quite poetry and not quite prose—and yet it transcends the…
2 weeks, 3 days ago
Jane Draycott, "Fulvia: The Woman Who Broke All the Rules in Ancient Rome" (Yale UP, 2025)
Fulvia was born into wealth, privilege, and prestige around the year 80 BCE, yet there was nothing inherently special about her—she was not a saint, …
2 weeks, 3 days ago
Jessica Riskin, "The Power of Life: The Invention of Biology and the Revolutionary Science of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck" (Penguin, 2026)
In the early nineteenth century, the French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck proposed the first evolutionary theory of life and, with it, a new scien…
2 weeks, 3 days ago
Andrew Fisher, "Nathan Straus: From Macy's Magnate to International Humanitarian" (Rutgers UP, 2026)
In New York City in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centauries, Nathan Straus was famous as a co-owner of the Macy’s and Abraham and Straus d…
2 weeks, 4 days ago
Emile Chabal, "The Age of Hobsbawm: The Life of a Revolutionary Historian" (Harvard UP, 2026)
Eric Hobsbawm (1917–2012) was one of the foremost European intellectuals of the twentieth century. He published hundreds of articles on modern hist…
2 weeks, 4 days ago
Happy to Help: Adventures of a People Pleaser
As a big sister, Girl Scout, personal assistant, sitcom sidekick, and, finally, mother of three, Amy believed it was her destiny to be a people pleas…
2 weeks, 5 days ago
Sandip Roy, "Chapal Rani, the Last Queen of Bengal" (Seagull Books, 2026)
Chapal Rani was one of India’s most famous performers of jatra, Bengal’s popular theater. Traditionally, all the roles, including female roles, were …
2 weeks, 5 days ago
Scott Peeples, "How Many Roads: A Life of Bob Dylan" (Reaktion, 2026)
Scott Peeple's How Many Roads: A Life of Bob Dylan (Reaktion, 2026) chronicles Bob Dylan’s rise from apprenticeships in Minneapolis cafés and Greenwi…
3 weeks, 1 day ago
Edward E. Andrews, "Newport Gardner's Anthem: A Story of Slavery, Struggle, and Survival in Early America" (Cornell UP, 2025)
Newport Gardner's Anthem: A Story of Slavery, Struggle, and Survival in Early America (Cornell UP, 2025) explores the remarkable life of Occramer Mar…
3 weeks, 1 day ago
Echoes of Incense on the Shikoku Pilgrimage with Don Weiss
Amy Chavez talks to Don Weiss, currently mid-way through the Shikoku Pilgrimage — Japan's 1,300 km Buddhist route that has been walked for almost as…
3 weeks, 2 days ago