Podcast Episodes
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Episode 200
In this special 200th episode of the History of Literature, Jacke and Mike discuss one of Mike's all-time favorite novels, Thomas Mann's The Magic Mo…
6 years, 5 months ago
Jonathan Swift
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) was a man who loved ciphers and a cipher of a man, an Anglo-Irishman who claimed not to like Ireland but became one of its…
6 years, 5 months ago
Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) was born in Boston in 1932, the daughter of a German-born professor, Otto Plath, and his student, Aurelia Schober. After her…
6 years, 5 months ago
Margaret Atwood
Episode 197
A week ago, Margaret Atwood (b. 1939) turned 80. A month ago, she was awarded the Booker Prize for her eighteenth novel, The Testaments. But how did …
6 years, 6 months ago
Thomas Hardy
Episode 195
He was born to a lower class family of tradesmen in 1840. Eighty eight years later, he died as one of the most celebrated writers in England. His nam…
6 years, 6 months ago
George Saunders (with Mike Palindrome)
Episode 194
Jacke and Mike take a look at contemporary author George Saunders, author of Pastoralia, Tenth of December, and Lincoln at the Bardo, In spite of som…
6 years, 6 months ago
Macbeth
Episode 193
It's been called "the great Shakespearean play of stage superstition and uncanniness." It's also one of Shakespeare's four major tragedies, and for m…
6 years, 7 months ago
Alfred Hitchcock (with Mike Palindrome)
Episode 192
Jacke's joined by the Hall of Fame Guest Mike Palindrome (President of the Literature Supporters Club) for a look at the ten greatest films by the Ma…
6 years, 7 months ago
Chinua Achebe
Episode 191
Chinua Achebe's first novel Things Fall Apart (1959) ushered in a new era where African countries, which had recently achieved post-colonial independ…
6 years, 7 months ago
Blood and Sympathy in the 19th Century (with Professor Ann Kibbie)
"England may with justice claim to be the native land of transfusion," wrote one European physician in 1877, acknowledging Great Britain’s role in de…
6 years, 7 months ago