Podcast Episodes
Back to Search114 Christopher Marlowe – What Happened and What If?
In 1921, T.S. Eliot wrote, “When Shakespeare borrowed from him, which was pretty often at the beginning, Shakespeare either made something inferior o…
8 years, 7 months ago
112 The Novelist and the Witch-Doctor – Unpacking Nabokov’s Case Against Freud (with Joshua Ferris)
“I admire Freud greatly,” the novelist Vladimir Nabokov once said, “as a comic writer.” For Nabokov, Sigmund Freud was “the Viennese witch-doctor,” o…
8 years, 8 months ago
111 The Americanest American – Ralph Waldo Emerson
In 1984, the literary scholar Harold Bloom had this to say about Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Emerson is the mind of our climate, the principal source of th…
8 years, 8 months ago
110 Heart of Darkness – Then and Now
Jacke and Mike discuss Joseph Conrad’s short novel Heart of Darkness, Francis Ford Coppola’s film Apocalypse Now, and Eleanor Coppola’s documentary H…
8 years, 8 months ago
109 Women of Mystery (with Christina Kovac)
Author Christina Kovac (The Cutaway: A Thriller) joins Jacke for a discussion of crime fiction, writing a strong female protagonist, working in the l…
8 years, 8 months ago
108 Beowulf (aka Need a Hero? Get a Grip…)
The poem called Beowulf (ca. 850 CE) was composed in Old English during what is known as the Middle Ages. Telling the tale of a hero who fights two m…
8 years, 8 months ago
107 The Man and the Myth – Arthur Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes (with Mattias Bostrom)
Continuing our series on literary myths, we’re joined by Mattias Bostrom, author of From Holmes to Sherlock: The Story of the Men and Women Who Creat…
8 years, 9 months ago
106 Literature Goes to the Movies, Part Two – Flops, Bombs, and Stinkeroos
Ah, the sweet smell of success… and the burning stench of failure. Continuing their two part conversation on literary adaptations, Jacke and Mike cho…
8 years, 9 months ago
105 Funny Women, Crimes Against Book Clubs, George Orwell, and More (with Kathy Cooperman)
Kathy Cooperman, author of the new novel Crimes Against a Book Club, joins the show to discuss everything from the secret lives of book clubs to her …
8 years, 9 months ago
104 King Lear
We all know that Shakespeare’s King Lear is one of the greatest tragedies ever written. But was it too tragic? Dr. Johnson thought it might be. Leo T…
8 years, 9 months ago