Richard III: Good Guy or Evil Putz?

Before Facebook and MySpace, before even Friendster, there was SixDegrees. Dive in today to learn about the first social media site, that was a few years too early.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. 

8 tracks were during vinyl, but preceded cassettes. Why? So people could listen to their music on the go. Check out this antiquated medium today.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. 

Sherlock Holmes is perhaps the most famous fictional character in the world, and for good reason. More than a hundred years on, Arthur Conan Doyle’s 60 Holmes stories are still in print and he is the most portrayed human literary character in history.See omnystudio.com/listener f ... Show More

Who’s to blame for Hamlet? This week, The Alarmist (Rebecca Delgado Smith) welcomes back Adam Lustick to discuss the events that transpire in the Shakespearean tragedy Hamlet. Arguably Shakespeare’s greatest work, there’s hardly a main character left standing by the time it’s ove ... Show More

Playwright William Shakespeare is widely acknowledged as one of the most influential writers in the English language, and his plays have been read or performed millions of times around the world. He was also quite prolific: Between about 1590 and 1613, Shakespeare wrote at least ... Show More

Nearly four centuries after his death, no writer has come close to matching Shakespeare’s understanding of the world – or his gift for dramatic poetry. It’s not just kings and queens that he captured so uniquely in his transcendent verse. Shakespeare analysed the human condition, ... Show More

It is a truth universally acknowledged that tragedy is one of the world's highest art forms, and that Shakespeare was one of the form's greatest practitioners. But how did he do it? What models did he have to draw upon, and where did he innovate? In this episode, Jacke talks to S ... Show More

Macbeth, Act Two, Scene Two.  In the inaugural episode of Professing Literature we examine a conversation held in the aftermath of one of literature’s most famous murders.  Macbeth has just stabbed a king to gain a throne he will never sit upon securely.  His tense exchange of wo ... Show More

Three generations of the Bamber family died in the family farmhouse in August 1985, in a case which came to be called the White House Farm Murders, one of the most notorious crimes in modern British history. Was it a murder/suicide? Or just straight-up murder? Thirty years later, ... Show More

Why has Shakespeare become such a cultural hero? 

Pol Pot is an evil bastard who had half his country killed, but he isn’t an interesting bastard, that title belongs to the man who enabled him, King Norodom Sihanouk. In Episode 10, Robert is joined by comedian, Caitlin Gill and they discuss the monarch who destroyed half of Camb ... Show More

In the wide realm of Shakespeare worship, the house in Stratford-upon-Avon where William Shakespeare was born in 1564 – known colloquially as the 'Birthplace' – remains the chief shrine. It's not as romantic as Anne Hathaway's thatched cottage, it's not where he wrote any of his ... Show More