They were collaborators, literary gadflies, and champions of the common people. They were the leading lights of the Harlem Renaissance. Their names were Zora Neale Hurston (1891 - 1960), the author of Their Eyes Were Watching God, and Langston Hughes (1902 - 1967), the author of “the Negro Speaks of Rivers” and “Let America Be America Again.” After meeting a ... Show More
Today
837 Ghost Month (with Simon Wroe) | Madness and Murder - The Story of Charles and Mary Lamb
Jacke gets ready for the Halloween season with an episode filled with madness, murder, and ghosts! First, he recounts the story of Romantic period writers Charles and Mary Lamb. Although the brother-sister duo later became famous for their summaries of Shakespeare's tales, they e ... Show More
1h 15m
Oct 12
836 Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics (with Robin Waterfield and John Sellars) | My Last Book with Daniel Olivas
What does it mean to live a good life? How can we accomplish it? For more than two thousand years, Western civilization has looked to Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics to help answer those questions. In this episode, Jacke talks to translator Robin Waterfield and scholar John Sellar ... Show More
56m 58s
Oct 8
835 Blackness in Iran (with Amy Motlagh) | My Last Book with Nicholas Boggs
What do Iranians - both home and abroad - think of race? Does "blackness" exist in Iran? And what can we learn about race and slavery in Iran from folklore, ethnography, literature, and films? In this episode, Jacke talks to author Amy Motlagh about her book Colorblind: Racial Th ... Show More
46m 4s
Jan 2020
227. Roz Chast and Patricia Marx (cartoons, words, ukuleles) – The Beatles stole everything from us
Thelma and Louise, Ponch and John, Pancho and Lefty, Quixote and Sancho Panza, Marx and Engels, Marx and Chast…history and literature are full of magical buddy stories. Every now and then, for reasons no one can explain, Two people come together and produce something greater, or ... Show More
45m 42s
Jul 2020
Radical Imagination: Tracy K. Smith, Marilyn Nelson, and Terrance Hayes on Poetry in Our Times
In a special episode of the Poetry Podcast, Tracy K. Smith, Marilyn Nelson, and Terrance Hayes join Kevin Young to read their work, and to discuss its relationship to protest and liberation. Tracy K. Smith served two terms as a U.S. poet laureate, and has won an Anisfield-Wolf Bo ... Show More
48m 56s