All Episodes

#243 - Looking out the window with Van Gogh

#242 - Anthology: poems on being a parent

#241 - London, Cleveland, Poland: Some new poems

#240 - Reading Kafka's Diaries

#239 - What I found in Amsterdam

#238 - Georgia O'Keeffe in New Mexico

#237 - Al Pacino remembers his childhood, and Eleanor Roosevelt finds herself

#236 - At home with Bach

#235 - London in 2011, London in the 1660s

#234: The Intensity of Private Moments

#233: Talking Baseball with Tom Hart

#232: Ted Hughes in Alaska

#231: The mythology of the moon

#230 - The mythology of the bear, and Byron gets apocalyptic

#229 : Mother Earth and myths of mining and agriculture

#228 - What Ted Bundy did on July 14, 1974

#227 - The Great Fire of London and the destruction of Jerusalem

#226: The Vitality and terror of cities

#225 - The invention of the wheel, and the power of storytelling

#224: Let's talk about William Blake

#223 - How to write two novels at the same time, with Charles Dickens

#222: Seamus Heaney - 10 Essential Poems

#221: Volcanoes, Plagues & the Childhood of a Kabbalist

#220: The working poor and a so-so murder show

#219: When a paragraph changes your life

#218: Poetry to Live By

#217: Voices from 1900-1914

#216: Poets, Prophets, Seeresses & Goddesses from Time & the River

#215: 8 Favorite Poems from "Time and the River"

#214: Two of the Best Poems You've Never Heard of (by William Cullen Bryant)

#213: Van Gogh's Early Years

#212: The Most Popular Story in Ancient India

#211: Who Was William Cullen Bryant?

#210: Memories & Legends of William Shakespeare

#209 - Being a Jew in 1900, Being a Jew Now

#208: Bach & God

#207 - Death, the Gods, and Endless Life in Ancient Egypt

#206 - The Discovery of Indo-European Languages - 1876

#205: Learning to Read, c. 2000 BCE

#204: Walt Whitman's "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry," 1856

#203: Bruce Springsteen Talks About "Nebraska" - 1984

#202 - A Death at Sea, 1834

#201 - Gillian Anderson, & What Women Want, 2024

#200: The Last Days of Walter Benjamin, 1940

#199: The Protestant Reformation Gets Going, c. 1517

#198: Georgia O'Keeffe Finds Herself in the Fall of 1915

#197: A Honeymoon in the House of the Dead in Ancient Mesopotamia, c. 2300 BCE

#196: Morning at the London Docks, c. 1850

First Person: Oppenheimer & the Bomb (from the archive)

"The One Who Sang So Well" (new story)

Notes from the Grid: Rediscovering the Hidden Life

Shakespeare: The Life & Times (from the archive)

Anthology: Poems for Spring (from the archive)

The Great Myths #24: Sigurd & the Dragon (from the archive)

Patti Smith / Mazzy Star & Living Colour / Philip Glass (from the archive)

Great Poems: Shakespeare's "To Be or Not to Be" (from the archive)

Anthology: Visionary Poems from Yeats, Whitman, Blake & Myth (from the archive)

First Person: Voices from 1900-1914 (from the archive)

Van Gogh's Early Years (from the archive)

William Blake (new episode)

John Keats: "The poet has no identity" (from the archive)

The Great Myths #2: Gilgamesh, Enkidu, & the Underworld (from the archive)

Bruce Springsteen / Simon Schama / The Iliad (from the archive)

Notes from the Grid: All Things Can Console (from the archive)

Advice from Walt Whitman & W. B. Yeats (from the archive)

The Great Myths #1: Gilgamesh Begins (from the archive)

A Farewell to the Podcast with Theodore Roethke's "The Rose"

7 Poems by H. D. (new episode)

6 Poems by R. S. Thomas (new episode)

4 Poems by Kenneth Rexroth (new episode)

Advice from Robert Pinsky (new episode)

Seamus Heaney: 7 Poems from "North"

Little Biographies

Nostalgia (new episode)

Walt Whitman's Life #7: His Notebooks & the Publication of "Leaves of Grass" (new episode)

The Most Brutal Scenes (new episode)

Ted Hughes: 14 Poems from "Crow" (new episode)

Robinson Jeffers: Selected Poems

Anthology: Poems on Modern Life (new episode)

An Interview with Amit Majmudar (new episode)

Ted Hughes: 11 Poems from "Remains of Elmet" (new episode)

Wallace Stevens: 11 Essential Poems

Ted Hughes: 6 Poems from "River"

Anthology: Poems on Being a Parent

Anthology: Poems About Childhood & Youth

Ted Hughes: 7 Poems from "Moortown Diary"

Britain: September 3, 1939

The new movie "Maestro," & what happens to our earliest dreams

Us Weird Geeks

Anthology: Poems for Autumn

Seamus Heaney: Selected Poems

Anthology: Poetry Friday with The Great Year, Shakespeare, Eliot, Blake, Poems on Work & Poems on Mythology

Caravaggio's Severed Heads / Herodotus Among the Scythians / Ian McKellen on Macbeth

Raising a Musical Prodigy / God's Response to Job

Seamus Heaney: 10 Essential Poems

Psalm 23 / Mary, Queen of Scots is Executed / 3 Poems by Mary Oliver

Shakespeare's Library / Ancient Egypt's Temple Libraries / Seamus Heaney Goes to School

Notes from the Grid: The Perpetual Adolescent

Cities Under Siege: The Gauls Sack Rome / Occupied Paris / William Blake's London

Rachel Carson on the Deep History of the Sea