Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchEmma Parker, "Life Writing and the End of Empire: Homecoming in Autobiographical Narratives" (Bloomsbury, 2024)
Episode 2025
Life Writing and the End of Empire: Homecoming in Autobiographical Narratives (Bloomsbury Academic, 2024) examines how autobiographical writing refle…
2 months, 2 weeks ago
Chasing Freedom: Coming of Age at the End of Empire with Simukai Chigudu
Episode 2024
"In my home country, they call me a 'bornfree'." Simukai Chigudu was born in Zimbabwe, two years after the end of its bitter war of liberation - a wa…
2 months, 2 weeks ago
Matthew Pinsker, "Boss Lincoln: The Partisan Life of Abraham Lincoln" (Norton, 2026)
Episode 2023
We know Abraham Lincoln as the eloquent, compassionate leader of a nation torn by civil war. But he had another, less visible side, equally central…
2 months, 3 weeks ago
Jonathan Cheng, "Korean Messiah: Kim Il Sung and the Christian Roots of North Korea’s Personality Cult" (Knopf, 2026)
Episode 2022
Of the two Koreas, it is the South which appears much the more Christian today, with all major cities dotted with church spires and illuminated cross…
2 months, 3 weeks ago
Abdelwahab Meddeb, "Returns to Marrakesh / Retour à Marrakech" (Syracuse UP, 2026)
Episode 2021
Abdelwahab Meddeb’s Returns to Marrakesh, co-translated by Claudia Esposito and Laura Reeck and published by Syracuse University Press in 2026, chron…
2 months, 3 weeks ago
The Letters of Emily Dickinson
Episode 2020
Emily Dickinson was a letter writer before she was a poet. And it was through letters that she shared prose reflections–alternately humorous, provoca…
2 months, 3 weeks ago
Elisabeth van Houts, "Empress Matilda: Queen of the Romans, Ruler of the English" (Yale UP, 2026)
Episode 2019
Born in 1102, Empress Matilda combined the blood of two dynasties: the house of Wessex and their conquerors, the dukes of Normandy. As a widowed Germ…
3 months ago
David Denby, "Eminent Jews: Bernstein, Brooks, Friedan, Mailer" (Henry Holt, 2025)
Episode 2018
What made a generation of Jewish artists and intellectuals transform American culture? In this episode, Rabbi Marc Katz sits down with acclaimed cu…
3 months ago
Gayle F. Wald, "This Is Rhythm: Ella Jenkins, Children’s Music, and the Long Civil Rights Movement" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
Episode 2016
Ella Jenkins (1924–2024) was one of the most influential musicians of the twentieth century, although many people have never heard of her. A pionee…
3 months, 1 week ago
Sarah Kaminsky, "The Forger of Paris" (Doppelhouse Press, 2025)
Episode 2017
The Forger of Paris (Doppelhouse Press, 2025) presents Adolfo Kaminsky’s biography in its only authorized edition, expanded with photographs from …
3 months, 1 week ago