Why do we read John Keats and not one of his well-regarded peers? Why do some authors disappear into the sands of time - while others, virtually unknown in their day, become posthumous household names? In this episode, Jacke talks to Harvard law professor Cass Sunstein (How to Become Famous: Lost Einsteins, Forgotten Superstars, and How the Beatles Came to B ... Show More
Apr 20
794 E.T.A. Hoffmann (with Ritchie Robertson) | My Last Book with Gerri Kimber
In addition to being an accomplished lawyer and a highly influential music critic, the nineteenth-century German Romantic Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann (1776-1822) also wrote pioneering works of crime and horror fiction, including The Sandman, Mademoiselle de Scuderi, and The Nu ... Show More
1h 4m
Apr 16
793 The Secret Order of Shandeans: Laurence Sterne in Early Soviet Russia (with Peter Budrin) | My Last Book with Edward Watts
The 1920s were a tumultuous time for Russia, as the nation careened from the aftermath of revolution to the death of Lenin, the establishment of the Soviet Union, and the slide toward Stalinist totalitarianism. Given all of that serious upheaval, what explains the public's passio ... Show More
48m 26s
Nov 2024
Roman, Elliott, and Robert Caro: Live in Conversation
What makes The Power Broker endure 50 years on? Roman Mars and Elliott Kalan sit down with legendary author Robert Caro to explore the humanity, drama, and untold stories behind his iconic book. Recorded live from the New York Historical Society.Roman, Elliott, and Robert Caro: L ... Show More
44m 34s
Sep 2025
ON WRITING... With Salman Rushdie and Kazuo Ishiguro
Welcome to another special edition of How to Fail, where I revisit conversations from the How to Fail archives. Each week, we shine a light on a particular theme, hopefully offering inspiration, perspective and comfort through the words of past guests. This week’s theme is on wri ... Show More
24m 18s
Jun 2023
The Success Myth Diaries #5: Tim Clare on Anxiety
Welcome back to The Success Myth Diaries. Today's guest is Tim Clare, performance poet, author of two fantasy novels and nonfiction books including WE CAN'T ALL BE ASTRONAUTS, which won Best Biography/Memoir at the East Anglian Book Awards. His latest book COWARD a brilliant book ... Show More
36m 58s
Aug 2023
The Long and Short: James Joyce's Dubliners
James Joyce wrote most of the short stories in his landmark collection, Dubliners, when he was still in his 20s, but a tortuous publishing history, during which printers refused or pulped them for their profanity, meant they weren’t published until 1914, when Joyce was 33. In the ... Show More
11m 9s
Jan 2025
Book Club: Let’s Talk About Alan Hollinghurst’s ‘Our Evenings’
<p>The novel “Our Evenings,” by Alan Hollinghurst, follows a gay English Burmese actor from childhood into old age as he confronts confusing relationships, his emerging sexuality, racism and England’s changing political climate in the late 20th and early 21st century. It’s the st ... Show More
47m 52s
Apr 2025
Close Readings: 'Vanity Fair' by William Makepeace Thackeray
Thackeray's comic masterpiece, 'Vanity Fair', is a Victorian novel looking back to Regency England as an object both of satire and nostalgia. Thackeray’s disdain for the Regency is present throughout the book, not least in the proliferation of hapless characters called George, ye ... Show More
34m 7s