Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchChinua Achebe: Reclaiming the African Story From Colonial Writers
Episode 11693
A young Nigerian medical student on a prestigious scholarship read a European novel that depicted Africans as buffoons or savages, and walked away fr…
5 days, 6 hours ago
Beatrix Potter: Scientist, Licensing Pioneer, Land Saver
Episode 11692
The oldest licensed toy in history, a coded diary that took five years to crack, and a strategic buyout of more than 4,000 acres to block developers …
5 days, 6 hours ago
Allen Lane and the Sixpenny Paperback That Changed Reading
Episode 11691
Standing on the platform at Exeter station in the mid-1930s with nothing worth reading, publisher Allen Lane conceived a plan to sell serious literat…
5 days, 6 hours ago
Herman Melville: Why Moby-Dick Flopped and Rose Again
Episode 11690
An extinct prehistoric sperm whale, Livyatan melvillei, is named after him, yet when Herman Melville died in 1891 the one major newspaper that ran an…
5 days, 6 hours ago
Hergé: The Troubled Life Behind Tintin's Clear Line
Episode 11689
The man who drew the most morally upright boy reporter in comics was arrested four times, jailed, and blacklisted as a collaborator at the height of …
5 days, 6 hours ago
Harriet Beecher Stowe: How Uncle Tom's Cabin Was Hijacked
Episode 11688
A former schoolteacher in Connecticut opened a package in the 1850s and found a severed human ear inside, sent in response to a novel she had written…
5 days, 6 hours ago
The Gutenberg Bible: A 1450s Tech Startup and Its $35M Legacy
Episode 11687
No complete Gutenberg Bible has sold since 1978, when one went for $2.4 million; today estimates run between $25 and $35 million. Yet the object was …
5 days, 6 hours ago
Graham Greene: Spy, Catholic Convert, and Master of the Thriller
Episode 11686
Graham Greene played Russian roulette as a bored teenager, joined the Communist Party hoping for a free trip to Russia, converted to Catholicism to m…
5 days, 6 hours ago
Howl: How One Word Spans Ginsberg, Horror Films, and K-Pop
Episode 11685
How does a single word become the title of a landmark 1956 poem, a 2015 British slasher film, a 1986 fantasy novel, a K-pop EP, a New York arts festi…
5 days, 6 hours ago
Winnie the Pooh: From WWI Bear Cub to Billion-Dollar Icon
Episode 11684
A real black bear skull sits in London's Hunterian Museum, its teeth ruined by decades of honey fed to it by a boy named Christopher Robin. That bear…
5 days, 6 hours ago