Anniversaries provide opportunities to take stock and reflect. It is now ten years since voters in the United Kingdom cast their ballots in a referendum on whether the UK should Leave or Remain in the European Union. The subsequent decade has seen much churn and change in British politics. Join Tim Haughton and guests Maria Sobolewska, Charlotte Galpin and M ... Show More
Jun 8
Stephen C.E. Hopkins, "Translating hell: Vernacular theology and apocrypha in the medieval North Sea" (Manchester UP, 2026)
In the Middle Ages, hell was useful because it was vaguely defined. Canonical scriptures scarcely mention hell, leaving much to the imaginations of early Christians, who used it to sort out who belonged within the faith. Translating hell: Vernacular theology and apocrypha in the ... Show More
1 h
Jun 6
Ashok Malhotra, "Imperial Science, the Organic Movement and the Path to Shangri La, 1900-1969" (UCL Press, 2026)
Imperial Science, the Organic Movement and the Path to Shangri La, 1900-1969 (UCL Press, 2026) is a global history project that examines the diffusion of scientific and environmental discourses from India to Britain and the US. Ashok Malhotra examines how imperial agendas and col ... Show More
35m 47s
Sep 2023
Episode 170: Printers, Plague and Poets
In this episode, we examine the connection between poetry and plague in the early 1590s. An outbreak of the recurring sickness contributed to Shakespeare’s early career as a poet, and that poetry likely included his many sonnets. We also examine how an old acquaintance from Shake ... Show More
1h 17m
Jan 2025
Andrew Smith, "Class and the Uses of Poetry: Symbolic Enclosures" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024)
Sociologists have had surprisingly little to say about poetry as a topic while sometimes also making grandiose claims that sociology is/should be like poetry. These are the prompts which begin Andrew Smith’s Class and the Uses of Poetry: Symbolic Enclosures (2024, Palgrave Macmil ... Show More
1h 9m
Jul 2024
Steven E. Lindquist, "The Literary Life of Yājñavalkya" (SUNY Press, 2024)
In The Literary Life of Yājñavalkya (SUNY Press, 2024), Steven E. Lindquist investigates the intersections between historical context and literary production in the "life" of Yājñavalkya, the most important ancient Indian literary figure prior to the Buddha. Known for his sharp t ... Show More
1h 2m
May 2024
Constantine P. Cavafy — Poems as Teachers | Ep 3
We ask questions to find out the facts, but what if you can’t trust the answers, the questions, or the person who's asking the questions? In Constantine P. Cavafy’s “Waiting for the Barbarians,” translated by Evan Jones, leaders exercise a sinister kind of violence — they’ve take ... Show More
17m 23s
Jun 2024
Beowulf: everything you wanted to know
Beowulf is the most famous Old English epic poem, relating the adventures of the eponymous hero as he battles beasts and dragons in a pre-Viking Scandinavian world. However, it's so much more than just a story of men and monsters, as Heather O'Donoghue reveals in this conversatio ... Show More
39m 27s