Emma, Vol 3, Chapter 7. A bright summer day in Surrey offers a sharp contrast to emotional storms. In this episode we discuss one of Jane Austen’s great set pieces, the picnic at Box Hill. Emma gets herself into deep trouble when she embarrasses an old friend, and the man who secretly loves her has to summon up the courage to tell her she was wrong. --- ... Show More
May 2021
EP03 - When the Sweet Turns Sour | Heaney, “Blackberry Picking”
Seamus Heaney, “Blackberry-Picking.” Today we consider a lyric poem from Death of a Naturalist, Seamus Heaney’s first collection (1966). In “Blackberry-Picking” Heaney recounts a memory from his childhood, or perhaps from the beginning of his childhood’s end.----------We started ... Show More
57m 35s
Jul 2021
EP04 - Lunchbreak At the Victory Mansions | Orwell, "1984"
George Orwell, 1984, Chapter One. The opening paragraphs of George Orwell’s novel seem innocuous, as a man named Winston Smith returns to his apartment building for lunch. However, from the first sentence onward Orwell estranges us from the world we take for granted and begins hi ... Show More
1h 3m
Jul 2021
EP05 - Alone in the Darkness | Milton, “When I Consider How My Light Is Spent”
John Milton, “When I Consider How My Light Is Spent.” In the early 1650s John Milton lost his eyesight. Blindness forced him out of politics, where he had been an important figure in Oliver Cromwell’s government, and into retirement where he wrote some of the greatest poetry in a ... Show More
54m 30s
Dec 2021
Ep 507 - If on a winter's night a traveler, by Italo Calvino
Sometimes a book is so meta it sort of breaks your brain! How to talk about a book that is all beginnings and no ends? How to discuss a book that enlists You, the Reader, in its chicanery? We try to get on the wavelength with Calvino's text. You be the judge of if we get there. O ... Show More
1h 6m
Dec 2022
472 The Art of Not Knowing
In this special episode, Jacke pays tribute to a friend, including a consideration of endings and beginnings, mystery and grace, and two powerful works: John Berger's The Shape of a Pocket and James Joyce's masterpiece "The Dead."
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone ... Show More
1h 6m
Nov 2023
568 The Tempest (with Laurie Frankel)
Jacke celebrates autumn with a look at Shakespeare's Sonnet #73 ("That time of year thou mayst in me behold"), then welcomes novelist Laurie Frankel (Family Family, One Two Three) for a Wednesday-before-Thanksgiving discussion of one of Shakespeare's last works, The Tempest.
Mus ... Show More
1h 18m