Human Voices Wake Us

An episode from 5/11/26: Tonight, I read passages on what the discoveries of agriculture and metallurgy meant for human beings, as reflected in the mythologies and rituals and stories that grew up around them. These passages are taken from sections 12 and 15 of Mircea Eliade’s History of Religious Ideas, Volume 1: From the Stone Age to the Eleusinian Mysteries.After Eliade’s rich catalogue of stories and beliefs that came out metallurgy, I read a few passages from the Hebrew Bible—Isaiah, Ezekiel, Malachi, Proverbs, and finally Job—where metallurgy is discussed literally and as metaphor. Here, metallurgy becomes a symbol of transformation imposed by God on backsliding humanity, as well as enduring symbol of wisdom and understanding.The best way to support the podcast is by leaving a review on Apple or Spotify, sharing it with others, or sending me a note on what you think. You can also order any of my books: Time and the River: From Columbine to the Invention of Fire, Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series. I also have a YouTube channel where I share poems and excerpts from these books, mostly as YouTube shorts.Email me at [email protected].

An episode from 5/4/26: Tonight, I read the story of the French journalist Jean-Paul Kauffmann and his capture and three year captivity at the hands of Hezbollah. While held prisoner, he was given many books to read to pass the time, and what I share comes from the spy novelist John le Carré’s memoir, The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories from My Life.Next, I read from Caroline Fraser’s Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers. As I say, ever since listening to the audiobook I’ve come to think that there are true crime books, and then there is Fraser’s book: for those who can stomach this kind of material, it is essential. I read the pages describing Ted Bundy’s kidnapping, sexual assault, and murder of Janice Ott and Denise Naslund on the same day—July 14, 1974—from Lake Sammamish State Park in Washington.The best way to support the podcast is by leaving a review on Apple or Spotify, sharing it with others, or sending me a note on what you think. You can also order any of my books: Time and the River: From Columbine to the Invention of Fire, Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series. I also have a YouTube channel where I share poems and excerpts from these books, mostly as YouTube shorts.Email me at [email protected]. 

An episode from 4/27/26: Tonight, I read about the destruction of two great houses of worship. The first is the cathedral of Old St. Paul’s, destroyed in 1666 in the Great Fire of London. My reading comes from Neil Hanson’s The Dreadful Judgement: The True Story of the Great Fire of London, and as mentioned, I link to the unabridged UK edition of the book, which is about a hundred pages longer than the American version. Next is the Second Jerusalem Temple, destroyed by the Romans in 60 CE. This reading is from Martin Goodman’s introduction to his Rome and Jerusalem: The Clash of Ancient Civilizations.  The best way to support the podcast is by leaving a review on Apple or Spotify, sharing it with others, or sending me a note on what you think. You can also order any of my books: Time and the River: From Columbine to the Invention of Fire, Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series. I also have a YouTube channel where I share poems and excerpts from these books, mostly as YouTube shorts.Email me at [email protected]. 

An episode from 4/20/26: Tonight, we delve into the world of cities. First, in a passage from Sam Quinones’s Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic, the town of Portsmouth, Ohio, is lovingly described in the decades before the epidemic.Next, a passage from Ben Wilson’s Metropolis: A History of the City, Humankind’s Great Invention describes the author’s travels to research the book, and his conclusion that the messiness of urban life is key to its vitality and innovation.Finally, I read letters from twentieth-century Jewish immigrants to New York City. Originally published in the Jewish Daily Forward and later collected in The Bintel Brief, the letters describe the difficulties faced by newly arrived immigrants who had rarely (if ever) experienced life outside of the insular world of shtetl.    The best way to support the podcast is by leaving a review on Apple or Spotify, sharing it with others, or sending me a note on what you think. You can also order any of my books: Time and the River: From Columbine to the Invention of Fire, Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series. I also have a YouTube channel where I share poems and excerpts from these books, mostly as YouTube shorts.Email me at [email protected].

An episode from 4/13/26: Tonight, I read about the invention of the wheel and what it meant for the earliest communities of Europe and the Eurasian steppes, from David Anthony’s The Horse, the Wheel, and Language.After this, a few passages from Norman Longmate’s How We Lived Then: A History of Everyday Life During the Second World War tells the story of gasoline rationing in England during the war, and the sometimes-comical lengths people went to hoard the fuel they could get a hold of.Finally, passages from S. Y. Agnon’s Days of Awe: A Treasury of Jewish Wisdom for Reflection, Repentance, and Renewal on the High Holy Days and Gershom Scholem’s Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism illustrate the power of language and storytelling in the Jewish tradition.The best way to support the podcast is by leaving a review on Apple or Spotify, sharing it with others, or sending me a note on what you think. You can also order any of my books: Time and the River: From Columbine to the Invention of Fire, Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series. I also have a YouTube channel where I share poems and excerpts from these books, mostly as YouTube shorts.Email me at [email protected].

An episode from 12/9/24: Tonight's episode gathers together all of the readings I've done on this podcast from the poet ⁠William Blake⁠ (1757-1827). All of these poems can be found online at ⁠The Complete Poetry & Prose of William Blake⁠:Blake & His Animals: One passage from Visions of the Daughters of Albion, and two from Milton. I hope that plucking these three excerpts from his longer work can suggest how varied—not just how prophetic and opaque, but simply beautiful—so much of his poetry can be. (From the episode ⁠Poetry Friday⁠)An excerpt from his long poem Milton. (From the episode ⁠Visionary Poems⁠) Listeners will forgive that this section fades in from a talk about Wordsworth and Whitman, and fades out as the episode it was taken from moves on to other poets.Another excerpt from Milton, where Blake's personal mythology is given free reign over the city of London. (From the episode ⁠Cities Under Siege⁠)The best way to support the podcast is by leaving a review on Apple or Spotify, sharing it with others, or sending me a note on what you think. You can also order any of my books: Time and the River: From Columbine to the Invention of Fire, Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series. I also have a YouTube channel where I share poems and excerpts from these books, mostly as YouTube shorts. Email me at [email protected].

An episode from 1/10/23: Tonight we take a peek into the creative life of Charles Dickens (1812-1870). Through a handful of readings from Claire Tomalin’s biography of Dickens, we see how he was able to juggle, for almost a year, the writing of two novels for simultaneous serial publication. Then, thanks to a letter written by Fyodor Dostoevsky, who visited Dickens in London in 1862, we also hear Dickens admitting that his villains were better reflections of himself than his more lovable and generous characters. We also answer the question: what do David Copperfield and Jane Eyre have in common? Finally, we hear about the chance encounter Dickens had with a young fan in America, who grew up to become a novelist herself.Note: these readings from the life of Dickens were originally the first part of a longer episode, hence the brief mention of the second part, no longer included, and the abrupt ending here. Listeners will forgive these frayed edges. The best way to support the podcast is by leaving a review on Apple or Spotify, sharing it with others, or sending me a note on what you think. You can also order any of my books: Time and the River: From Columbine to the Invention of Fire, Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series. I also have a YouTube channel where I share poems and excerpts from these books, mostly as YouTube shorts. Email me at [email protected].

An episode from 8/25/23: Tonight, I read ten essential poems from one of the great and most public poets of the last seventy years, Seamus Heaney (1939-2013). It isn’t hard to come by details of Heaney’s life, but ⁠Stepping Stones⁠ (where Heaney is interviewed at length in what amounts to an autobiography), is a good place to start. His poems are collected in ⁠100 Poems⁠, and in the ⁠individual collections⁠.There are many ways to look at Heaney’s work, and the ten poems I choose only present one picture: a poet as at home on the farm as he was at Harvard; as interested in literary history as in archaeology and the deep interior of the Irish imagination; as concerned with childhood, memory, and family as with the darkest aspects of human life. In introducing these poems, I reflect on Heaney’s importance in my own life, and the huge impact his death had on me, ten years ago this month.The poems I read are:  Personal Helicon (Death of a Naturalist, 1966)The Forge and Bogland (Door into the Dark, 1969)The Tollund Man (Wintering Out, 1972)The Strand at Lough Beg (Field Work, 1979)Squarings #2, #8, #40 (Seeing Things, 1991)from his translations of Beowulf (1999)Uncoupled (Human Chain, 2010)  The episode ends with Heaney's reading of "The Tollund Man."The best way to support the podcast is by leaving a review on Apple or Spotify, sharing it with others, or sending me a note on what you think. You can also order any of my books: Time and the River: From Columbine to the Invention of Fire, Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series. I also have a YouTube channel where I share poems and excerpts from these books, mostly as YouTube shorts. Email me at [email protected].

An episode from 3/16/26: Tonight, I read about the eruption of the volcano Krakatoa in the year 535 CE, and the outbreak of plague in Constantinople (and elsewhere) only a few years later. It all comes from Susan Wise Bauer’s The History of the Medieval World: From the Conversion of Constantine to the First Crusade, and I give a handful of reasons why her histories for adults and children are definitely worth going to.Bookending these stories are a few passages in Gershom Scholem’s (1887-1982) memoir, From Berlin to Jerusalem: Memoirs of My Youth. It turns out that the great kabbalist liked sweets, and riding around on roller-skates.The best way to support the podcast is by leaving a review on Apple or Spotify, sharing it with others, or sending me a note on what you think. You can also order any of my books: Time and the River: From Columbine to the Invention of Fire, Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series. I also have a YouTube channel where I share poems and excerpts from these books, mostly as YouTube shorts. Email me at [email protected].

An episode from 3/9/26: Tonight, I read from Barbara Ehrenreich’s 2001 book Nickle and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America. After that, I talk about the recent TV show The Killing, as a way in to talking about our obsession and desire for criticism, objectivity, and certainty. Isn’t privacy and the subjective more fruitful? Both parts of this episode are related to essays in my book Notes from the Grid.What is your equivalent of these passages? Email me or send an audio file to [email protected], and I may use it in an upcoming episode.The best way to support the podcast is by leaving a review on Apple or Spotify, sharing it with others, or sending me a note on what you think. You can also order any of my books: Time and the River: From Columbine to the Invention of Fire, Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series. I also have a YouTube channel where I share poems and excerpts from these books, mostly as YouTube shorts. Email me at [email protected].

An episode from 3/2/26: Tonight, I read a single paragraph from two books that each had a profound effect on my understanding of religion, creativity, and a great deal else. The first comes from page one of Mircea Eliade’s History of Religious Ideas, and the second from John Eliot Gardiner’s Johann Sebastian Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven.What is your equivalent of these passages? Email me or send an audio file to [email protected], and I may use it in an upcoming episode.The best way to support the podcast is by leaving a review on Apple or Spotify, sharing it with others, or sending me a note on what you think. You can also order any of my books: Time and the River: From Columbine to the Invention of Fire, Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series. I also have a YouTube channel where I share poems and excerpts from these books, mostly as YouTube shorts. Email me at [email protected].

An episode from 2/23/2026: My new book of poetry, Time and the River: From Columbine to the Invention of Fire, is finally out. I spend this episode talking briefly about how always having the writing or reading of poetry close at hand and close in mind, has saved my life many times. I also read a new poem, "London, 1943."If you enjoy this podcast, please get a copy of the book, review it and share it and pass it on. Many thanks to all my readers and listeners.The best way to support the podcast is by leaving a review on Apple or Spotify, sharing it with others, or sending me a note on what you think. You can also order any of my books: Time and the River: From Columbine to the Invention of Fire, due out next year, is now available for preorder. Other books include Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series. I also have a YouTube channel where I share poems and excerpts from these books, mostly as YouTube shorts. Email me at [email protected].

An episode from 1/2/23: Tonight, I read a handful of voices from those living in Europe and the United States between 1900 and 1914. Rephrased only slightly, nearly all of their concerns (over technology, gender, nationalism, war, eugenics) feel like they could appear in the news or on the street today. Then and now, what is actually going on alongside all the dread? What can we learn from these voices that sound so much like our own, and what will people look back on 2023 learn for themselves?Each of these quotations can be found in Philipp Blom’s wonderful book, The Vertigo Years.The best way to support the podcast is by leaving a review on Apple or Spotify, sharing it with others, or sending me a note on what you think. You can also order any of my books: Time and the River: From Columbine to the Invention of Fire, due out next year, is now available for preorder. Other books include Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series. I also have a YouTube channel where I share poems and excerpts from these books, mostly as YouTube shorts.Email me at [email protected].

An episode from 2/9/2026: This is the second episode where I read from my upcoming book Time and the River: From Columbine to the Invention of Fire, which comes out on February 23.This time, I read seven of my favorite poems from the point of view of women. They are:Mr Cassian’s Good Friend, Emily DickinsonVölvaSong to SequanaEponaThe Seeress of VixMiriamMorgan le FayAs I mention, more information about the continental Celtic goddesses Equana and Epona can be found in Miranda Green’s Myth and Symbol in Celtic Religious Art. My article on the burial at Vix is in issue #45 of Ancient World.The best way to support the podcast is by leaving a review on Apple or Spotify, sharing it with others, or sending me a note on what you think. You can also order any of my books: Time and the River: From Columbine to the Invention of Fire, due out next year, is now available for preorder. Other books include Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series. I also have a YouTube channel where I share poems and excerpts from these books, mostly as YouTube shorts.Email me at [email protected].

An episode from 2/2/2026: For the next few episodes I’ll be reading poems from my book Time and the River: From Columbine to the Invention of Fire, which comes out on February 23. As the title says, it begins with the Columbine high school shooting in 1999 and travels back to the invention of fire almost two million years ago. Along the way, there’s creativity from prehistoric Europe to Edward Hopper, religion from Israelite prophets to pagan Europe, and glimpses into Egyptian tombs, Iron Age burials, and cold war spies. The poems I read tonight are:Edward Hopper’s “Nighthawks”Dylan Klebold’s Crushfrom “Shakespeare”Trajan’s BridgeCauldron and DrinkSong to the SmithEzekielMerlinThe best way to support the podcast is by leaving a review on Apple or Spotify, sharing it with others, or sending me a note on what you think. You can also order any of my books: Time and the River: From Columbine to the Invention of Fire, due out next year, is now available for preorder. Other books include Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series. Email me at [email protected].

An episode from 1/26/2026: Tonight, I read two poems from the American poet William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878), “Earth” and “The River, by Night.” Just as with the episode on Bryant’s life from earlier this month, I hope this episode brings his writing and poetry to the attention of more readers.The best way to support the podcast is by leaving a review on Apple or Spotify, sharing it with others, or sending me a note on what you think. You can also order any of my books: Time and the River: From Columbine to the Invention of Fire, due out next year, is now available for preorder. Other books include Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series. Email me at [email protected].

An episode from 12/7/22: This week, I am reposting what is perhaps my favorite episode of Human Voices Wake Us, first posted back in late 2022. We enter into the early years of Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890), from his birth in the village of Zundert in the Netherlands, to his time in the Borinage mining region of Belgium. It was there, at the age of twenty-seven—and after years of personal and professional failures—that he hit bottom … and suddenly realized he was an artist.In the first half of the episode, I read from Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith’s biography, ⁠⁠Van Gogh: The Life⁠⁠. The second half is devoted to a handful of letters Van Gogh wrote to his brother in 1879 and 1880, where he admits the humiliation of his failures, and then revels in his newfound passion for drawing and painting. The letters can be ⁠⁠found online here⁠⁠.The best way to support the podcast is by leaving a review on Apple or Spotify, sharing it with others, or sending me a note on what you think. You can also order any of my books: Time and the River: From Columbine to the Invention of Fire, due out next year, is now available for preorder. Other books include Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series. Email me at [email protected].

An episode from 1/12/2026: Tonight, I read from the oldest religious poetry from India, the collection of 1,028 ritual hymns known as the The Rig Veda. Specifically, I read from the most popular story found there, the defeat of the serpent Vrtra by the god Indra and the freeing of the waters of the world.I begin by telling the story briefly and then sharing examples of the short references to it that are scattered all over the Rig Veda (from hymns 1.51, 1.56, 1.57, 2.19, 4.17, 4.30), which in themselves are indications as to how well-known the story was. Finally, I read a handful of hymns (1.32, 1.80, 4.19) in their entirety that tell the story in different ways.The translation and commentary I read from is by Stephanie Jamison and Joel Brereton; it took years to find a good and decently priced used copy of these volumes, but I would recommend them to anyone interested in Hinduism, poetry, or religion.The best way to support the podcast is by leaving a review on Apple or Spotify, sharing it with others, or sending me a note on what you think. You can also order any of my books: Time and the River: From Columbine to the Invention of Fire, due out next year, is now available for preorder. Other books include Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series.Email me at [email protected].

An episode from 1/5/2026: Tonight, I read a handful of passages from Gilbert Muller’s William Cullen Bryant: Author of America. During his lifetime, Bryant (1794-1878) was the most popular poet in America as well as one of the country’s most trusted and influential editors and journalists. Through Bryant’s own words and those of his contemporaries, I trace the story of that double-prominence, and the unease many felt over the fate of Bryant’s poetry against the pressures of politics. I also address how, since his death, Bryant has become almost entirely unknown and unread.The best way to support the podcast is by leaving a review on Apple or Spotify, sharing it with others, or sending me a note on what you think. You can also order any of my books: Time and the River: From Columbine to the Invention of Fire, due out next year, is now available for preorder. Other books include Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series.Email me at [email protected].

An episode from 12/28/25: What was it like to know Shakespeare, to stand in the theater and watch one of his plays, to be a neighbor who knew him as a teenager? What was it like to pass through London as a student or visitor or diplomat, and note in passing that you saw Shakespeare’s plays, or read one of his poems? So much of Shakespeare’s life is lost to us, but over the centuries his biographers have gathered the memories and rumors and legends that grew up around him, and tonight I read a few of them. They comes from Peter Ackroyd’s ⁠Shakespeare: The Biography⁠, which is easily the best book about Shakespeare and creativity that I’ve ever read.The best way to support the podcast is by leaving a review on Apple or Spotify, sharing it with others, or sending me a note on what you think. You can also order any of my books: ⁠Time and the River: From Columbine to the Invention of Fire⁠, due out next year, is now available for preorder. Other books include ⁠Notes from the Grid⁠, ⁠To the House of the Sun⁠, ⁠The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old⁠, and ⁠Bone Antler Stone⁠. I've also edited a handful of books in the ⁠S4N Pocket Poems⁠ series.Email me at ⁠[email protected]⁠.

An episode from 12/15/25: Tonight, I read from Irving Howe’s World of Our Fathers: The Journey of the East European Jews to America and the Life They Found and Made. In light of the events in Australia yesterday, I take the time not just to talk about what it meant to be a Jewish immigrant to America around the year 1900, but what it means to me to be a Jew right now.The best way to support the podcast is by leaving a review on Apple or Spotify, sharing it with others, or sending me a note on what you think. You can also order any of my books: Time and the River: From Columbine to the Invention of Fire, due out next year, is now available for preorder. Other books include Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series.Email me at [email protected].

An episode from 12/8/25: Note: A version of this episode was posted last week and quickly taken down when I realized the audio quality was poor. I have rerecorded it here; apologies to those listeners who heard the subpar version.Tonight, I read from John Eliot’s Gardiner’s Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven. Gardiner talks about Bach’s Christian faith, how much we can expect listeners today to know about liturgical context of his music, as well as his intense attachment to the writings of Martin Luther. He also asks a fairly mundane question about Bach’s book-buying habits that humanizes the usually distant-seeming Bach quite a bit.I open the episode with a quote from the American poet William Cullen Bryant. Bryant was also a newspaper editor, and he once wrote to a friend who was concerned how this work would affect his poetry, “I do not like politics any better than you do; but they get only my mornings, and you know politics and a belly-full are better than poetry and starvation.”The best way to support the podcast is by leaving a review on Apple or Spotify, sharing it with others, or sending me a note on what you think. You can also order any of my books: Time and the River: From Columbine to the Invention of Fire, due out next year, is now available for preorder. Other books include Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series.Email me at [email protected].

An episode from 11/24/25: Tonight, I read from one of the best books on religion in ancient Egypt, Erik Hornung’s Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt: The One and the Many. Few have written so lucidly on the subject: Egyptians were actually obsessed with life and its renewal, not in wallowing death; the “monotheistic” reforms of Akhenaten were not visionary at all, but largely practical and pretty brutal; the essence of Egyptian religion was its ability to go on and on, adding to its own profuseness wherever it could, and resisting systemization and dogmas at every turn; and so on.I open the episode with a quotation about William Blake from Peter Ackroyd’s biography of him.The best way to support the podcast is by leaving a review on Apple or Spotify, sharing it with others, or sending me a note on what you think. You can also order any of my books: Time and the River: From Columbine to the Invention of Fire, due out next year, is now available for preorder. Other books include Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series.Email me at [email protected].

An episode from 11/17/25: Tonight, I read a section from David Anthony’s book The Horse, the Wheel, and Language. It is a wonderfully written account of the archeological and linguistic attempts to discover the origins of the Indo-European language families. The part I read from retells the famous story of Sir William Jones, the Welsh linguist and lawyer stationed in British India in the late eighteenth century, and the eureka moment he had upon realizing that Sanskrit, Latin, Greek (and so many other languages) are related. Anthony also sums up the political, nationalist (and, eventually, simply racist) uses to which this discovery was put.I open the episode with some small remarks on Johann Sebastian Bach, and an anecdote found in Christoph Wolff’s Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician.The best way to support the podcast is by leaving a review on Apple or Spotify, sharing it with others, or sending me a note on what you think. You can also order any of my books: Time and the River: From Columbine to the Invention of Fire, due out next year, is now available for preorder. Other books include Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series.Email me at [email protected].

An episode from 11/10/25: Tonight, I talk about literacy and education in the ancient world, both the fascinating aspects of memorization and of what “reading” meant back (it was much closer to reading shorthand today), and the precarious reality that anyone who underwent scribal training in Mesopotamia or Egypt might not even live long enough to see their education through. The book I read from is David Carr’s Writing on the Tablet of the Heart: Origins of Scripture and Literature. I also begin the episode with a small passage on the life of CIA spymaster James Angleton, from Tom Mangold’s biography of him, Cold Warrior. What other podcast would combine these two into one satisfying episode?The best way to support the podcast is by leaving a review on Apple or Spotify, sharing it with others, or sending me a note on what you think. You can also order any of my books: Time and the River: From Columbine to the Invention of Fire, due out next year, is now available for preorder. Other books include Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series. Email me at [email protected].

An episode from 11/3/25: Tonight, I read what is perhaps Walt Whitman’s greatest poem, “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry.” I also set it in the context of Whitman’s life as a poet: he wrote and published the first edition of Leaves of Grass in 1855 and was certain that the book would have an immediate cultural and national impact. When this didn’t happen, and while Whitman was preparing the second edition of Leaves of Grass only a year later, part of his response is expressed in “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry”—whose original title was “Sun-Down Poem.” Here is the most vivid and memorable expression of what I’ve called Whitman’s Mystical Poetry, where he connects readers past and present with his own life. Rarely has an artist’s experience of disappointment and loneliness (and sense of wish-fulfillment) produced something like this.I read from the first published edition of the poem, which can be found here.The best way to support the podcast is by leaving a review on Apple or Spotify, sharing it with others, or sending me a note on what you think. You can also order any of my books: Time and the River: From Columbine to the Invention of Fire, due out next year, is now available for preorder. Other books include Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series.Email me at [email protected].

An episode from 10/24/25: I’ve been waiting in vain for a cold to pass so I can record a new episode. As that doesn’t seem to be happening anytime soon, the new movie about Bruce Springsteen reminded me that a few years ago I recorded an episode about his 1982 album Nebraska. While the original episode itself is much longer, tonight’s episode presents only the part about Springsteen. I hope you enjoy it, and I hope it gets a few of you out there to listen to Nebraska again.The best way to support the podcast is by leaving a review on Apple or Spotify, sharing it with others, or sending me a note on what you think. You can also order any of my books: Time and the River: From Columbine to the Invention of Fire, due out next year, is now available for preorder. Other books include Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series. Email me at [email protected].

An episode from 10/6/25: Tonight, I read from Richard Henry Dana Jr.’s Two Years Before the Mast, first published in 1840. It tells of the death of one sailor, George Ballmer. The text of this passage can be found here. I also read a quote from the poet Derek Walcott, and part of the poem “The Burning of the Leaves,” by Laurence Binyon.The best way to support the podcast is by leaving a review on Apple or Spotify, sharing it with others, or sending me a note on what you think. You can also order any of my books: Time and the River: From Columbine to the Invention of Fire, due out next year, is now available for preorder. Other books include Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series.Email me at [email protected].

An episode from 9/25/25: Tonight, I read a few entries from the book Gillian Anderson edited, called Want: Sexual Fantasies by Anonymous. It is a collection of sexual fantasies from women all over the world, but as I point out, behind the acrobatics and explicitness of what we assume fantasy to be all about, a much simpler and basic need is also being longed for. (And I have a feeling that men, too, even if they phrase it differently, probably wish for something very similar.) I also read one of Heloise’s letters to her lover Abelard, whose love affair made waves back in the twelfth century.The best way to support the podcast is by leaving a review on Apple or Spotify, sharing it with others, or sending me a note on what you think. You can also order any of my books: Time and the River: From Columbine to the Invention of Fire, due out next year, is now available for preorder. Other books include Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series.Email me at [email protected].

An episode from 9/15/25: Tonight, I read a long section on the last days of the philosopher Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) from the biography Walter Benjamin: A Critical Life, by Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings. (For those who are interested, the BBC’s In Our Time devotes an entire hour to Benjamin’s life and work.) I also read two small passages from Barbara Tuchman’s A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous Fourteenth Century.The best way to support the podcast is by leaving a review on Apple or Spotify, sharing it with others, or sending me a note on what you think. You can also order any of my books: Time and the River: From Columbine to the Invention of Fire, due out next year, is now available for preorder. Other books include Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series.Email me at [email protected].

An episode from 9/9/25: Tonight, I read from three books: A small passage from The Golden Age Shtetl: A New History of Jewish Life in East Europe, by Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern, on how pocket calendars were essential references for popular knowledge. A longer passage, on the Protestant Reformation (and the invention of moveable type that facilitated its spread), from Jacques Barzun’s From Dawn to Decadence: 1500 to the Present: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life. I conclude with small passage on Martin Luther's contemporary, Erasmus of Rotterdam, from my book Notes from the Grid.The best way to support the podcast is by leaving a review on Apple or Spotify, sharing it with others, or sending me a note on what you think. You can also order any of my books: Time and the River: From Columbine to the Invention of Fire, due out next year, is now available for preorder. Other books include Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series.Email me at [email protected].

An episode from 9/1/25: Tonight, I read a small passage from Herman Hesse’s Steppenwolf, and then a much longer passage from Laurie Lisle’s Portrait of an Artist: A Biography of Georgia O’Keeffe. In it, Lisle describes the weeks and months in late 1915 during which O’Keeffe found herself as an artist after her decision to start from scratch and devote herself to drawing only in charcoal. It was as a result of these drawings that she met her future husband, the photographer Alfred Stieglitz, and that her long career as a painter truly began.The best way to support the podcast is by leaving a review on Apple or Spotify, sharing it with others, or sending me a note on what you think. You can also order any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series.Email me at [email protected].

An episode from 8/27/25: Tonight, I read from Amanda Podany’s wonderful book, Weavers, Scribes, and Kings: A New History of the Ancient Near East. After a royal wedding took place in the ancient Syrian city of Ebla around 2300 BCE, the new king and queen spent no less than three weeks among the tombs and statues of their royal forbears. I conclude the episode with the response of one listener to the last episode, where he notes that the London docks of 1850 aren’t much different from similar places in contemporary India.The best way to support the podcast is by leaving a review on Apple or Spotify, sharing it with others, or sending me a note on what you think. You can also order any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series. Email me at [email protected] with any comments, and they might be used in an upcoming episode.

An episode from 8/23/25: Returning to the podcast after a long hiatus, I read from Henry Mayhew and John Binny’s London Labour and the London Poor, their exhaustive and essential description of life in London for the working poor in the mid-nineteenth century. Far from being a dry and distant document, it is a work of literature in itself, as this description of the London docks—and those hoping for a day of paid work there—shows. The text can be found here.The best way to support the podcast is by leaving a review on Apple or Spotify, sharing it with others, or sending me a note on what you think. You can also order any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series.Email me at [email protected].

An episode from 7/21/23: Tonight, I read a few dozen quotations from the scientists, politicians, and military figures who were instrumental in the development of the atomic bomb, and in the final decision to drop it on Japan in August of 1945. The most prominent voices here are those of Robert Oppenheimer and his fellow physicists, whose dedication and excitement to develop the bomb was matched only by their misgivings (though rarely their outright regret) in the years after World War Two. While I previously dedicated four long episodes to the subject, I tried here to isolate the most vivid quotations, and the most difficult ideas, into one episode. The sources I drew on for this episode are: ⁠The Making of the Atomic Bomb⁠, by Richard Rhodes ⁠Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb⁠, by Richard Rhodes ⁠American Prometheus: The Triumph & Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer⁠, by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin ⁠J. Robert Oppenheimer: Shatterer of Worlds⁠, by Peter Goodchild. John Else’s documentary, The Day After Trinity, ⁠can be watched here⁠. John Bradley’s anthology of poets writing about the bomb is ⁠Atomic Ghosts: Poets Respond to the Atomic Age⁠. My poem about Robert Oppenheimer ⁠can be read here⁠.Don’t forget to support Human Voices Wake Us on Substack, where you can also get our newsletter and other extras. You can also support the podcast by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone.Any comments, or suggestions for readings I should make in later episodes, can be emailed to [email protected].

An episode from 6/15/25: Tonight, the podcast returns briefly for a reading of my new short story, "The One Who Sang So Well." The episode coincides with the story's publication in The Basilisk Tree—you can read it here. Many thanks to editor Bryan Helton for taking the story.You can support Human Voices Wake Us here, or by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series. Email me at [email protected].

An episode from 4/26/22: Tonight, I begin a five-part series called Notes from the Grid. (A print version of NFTG has since been published.) In this first part, figures as various as Kurt Cobain, Michelangelo, Lee Harvey Oswald, and Albert Einstein are called on to ask: why do so few of us find meaning in private experiences, private thoughts? What does fame do to the people and ideas and events we love and want to remember? And why does our attitude towards privacy and fame seem to convince us that meaning can only come from our participation in outward, public, or historical events? Don’t forget to support Human Voices Wake Us on Substack, where you can also get our newsletter and other extras. You can also support the podcast by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone.Any comments, or suggestions for readings I should make in later episodes, can be emailed to [email protected].

An episode from 10/16/23: Tonight, I read my long poem about William Shakespeare, and offer a commentary along the way. It is being published simultaneously at Bryan Helton’s The Basilisk Tree, and once again I give Bryan my infinite thanks.This will be the third long poem of mine that he has published this year to coincide with an episode of Human Voices Wake Us – the other two are on Leonardo da Vinci and Pythagoras. Please take the time to check out the rest of The Basilisk Tree, or to even submit your own poetry.While introducing my Shakespeare poem, I mention that it was in part inspired by an episode I did here on the (real or fictional) love life of Walt Whitman. You can listen to that episode here.Don’t forget to support Human Voices Wake Us on Substack, where you can also get our newsletter and other extras. You can also support the podcast by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone.Any comments, or suggestions for readings I should make in later episodes, can be emailed to [email protected].

An episode from 3/12/23: Tonight, I return to new episodes with a handful of poems about the spring. As I mention, living as I do in a city usually inundated with snow, it has been bizarre to have not shoveled the driveway even once. And since the next few weeks of episodes are already planned out, it seemed appropriate to get to spring early, since the earth is doing that already. The poems are: Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), “There is another sky” e. e. cummings (1894-1962), “O sweet spontaneous” Richard Eberhart (1904-2005), “This Fevers Me” Kenneth Rexroth (1905-1982), from “Toward an Organic Philosophy” Vernon Watkins (1906-1967), from “The Tributary Seasons” Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950), “Spring” (“To what purpose, April, do you return again?” Abbie Huston Evans (1881-1983), “The Old Yellow Shop” Elinor Wylie (1885-1928), from “Wild Peaches” Henry King (1592-1669), “A Contemplation upon Flowers” William Shakespeare (1564-1616), from Act 3 of King Lear Ted Hughes (1930-1998), “Four March Watercolours”Don’t forget to support Human Voices Wake Us on Substack, where you can also get our newsletter and other extras. You can also support the podcast by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone.Any comments, or suggestions for readings I should make in later episodes, can be emailed to [email protected].

An episode from 5/20/24: Tonight, after a long hiatus, we return to Norse myth with the story of Sigurd’s killing of the dragon, Fafnir. Couched in a much longer narrative that contains shape-shifting, war, revenge, brief appearances by Odin and Loki, and finally Sigurd’s ability to hear the language of birds and animals, it is a brilliant and vivid example of storytelling in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. I read from the two great sources of the story, the ⁠Volsung Saga⁠ (in the Jesse Byock translation) and Snorri Sturluson’s ⁠Prose Edda⁠ (in the Anthony Faulkes translation). I also discuss the history of the story, and its reworking in the Nibelungenlied, and Wagnerian opera. ⁠Listen to the other Great Myths here⁠. You can support Human Voices Wake Us here, or by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series. Email me at  [email protected].

An episode from 11/13/23: Tonight, I talk about our attachment to music as teenagers and adults, and the lessons that loving music—and finding meaning in musicians’ life stories—can teach us. First, I read two passages from Patti Smith’s memoir, ⁠Just Kids⁠. Those parts on her early life with the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, before either of them were well-known, are incredibly moving. Next, I talk about my attachment to the band Mazzy Star, and then read from a listener’s email about seeing the band Living Colour perform live for the first time, after years of listening to their music. Finally, I read a few passages from ⁠Words Without Music⁠, a memoir by the composer Philip Glass. You can support Human Voices Wake Us here, or by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series. Email me at  [email protected].

An episode from 8/12/22: Everybody knows the most famous soliloquy in all of drama, or at least the first line of it: ⁠"To be or not to be, that is the question,"⁠ from act three of Shakespeare's Hamlet. Tonight, I delve into the speech and try to figure out why it works so well not just as poetry and drama, but why it has leapt beyond literature entirely to become a cultural touchstone. Throughout the episode I include the performance of this speech from modern actors: the first is by ⁠Paapa Essiedu⁠, and the second by ⁠Andrew Scott⁠. The very last, to give a sense of what the original pronunciation of the speech would have sounded like, is performed by ⁠Ben Crystal⁠. A larger compilation of nine different versions ⁠can be found here⁠. The books read from in this episode are Ben and David Crystal’s ⁠Shakespeare’s Words: A Glossary and Language Companion⁠, Marjorie Garber’s ⁠Shakespeare After All⁠, and Peter Ackroyd’s ⁠Shakespeare: The Biography⁠. You can support Human Voices Wake Us here, or by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series. Email me at  [email protected].

An episode from 3/3/24: Tonight, I read from a handful of what I call “visionary” poems. After an introductory section of familiar nineteenth- and twentieth-century poets, I go back to the sources of those, which are found in religious scripture and myth: W. B. Yeats: “The Second Coming” T. S. Eliot: sections from The Waste Land and “East Coker” Walt Whitman: the first section of “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” William Wordsworth: from the thirteenth book of The Prelude William Blake: from his long poem Milton The first chapter of Ezekiel (from the JPS audio Tanakh) A speech from Euripides’s Bacchae, tr. William Arrowsmith Part of the eleventh book of the Bhagavad-Gita, tr. by Amit Majmudar in his Godsong I close the episode with a reading that will not surprise long-time listeners. You can support Human Voices Wake Us here, or by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series. Email me at  [email protected].

An episode from 1/2/23: Tonight, I read a handful of voices from those living in Europe and the United States between 1900 and 1914. Rephrased only slightly, nearly all of their concerns (over technology, gender, nationalism, war, eugenics) feel like they could appear in the news or on the street today. Then and now, what is actually going on alongside all the dread? What can we learn from these voices that sound so much like our own, and what will people look back on 2023 learn for themselves? Each of these quotations can be found in Philipp Blom’s wonderful book, ⁠The Vertigo Years: Europe, 1900-1914⁠. You can support Human Voices Wake Us here, or by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series. Email me at  [email protected].

An episode from 12/7/22: Tonight, we enter into the early years of Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890), from his birth in the village of Zundert in the Netherlands, to his time in the Borinage mining region of Belgium. It was there, at the age of twenty-seven—and after years of personal and professional failures—that he hit bottom … and suddenly realized he was an artist. In the first half of the episode, I read from Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith’s biography, ⁠⁠Van Gogh: The Life⁠⁠. The second half is devoted to a handful of letters Van Gogh wrote to his brother in 1879 and 1880, where he admits the humiliation of his failures, and then revels in his newfound passion for drawing and painting. The letters can be ⁠⁠found online here⁠⁠. You can support Human Voices Wake Us here, or by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series. Email me at  [email protected].

An episode from 12/9/24: Tonight's episode gathers together all of the readings I've done on this podcast from the poet William Blake (1757-1827). All of these poems can be found online at The Complete Poetry & Prose of William Blake: Blake & His Animals: One passage from Visions of the Daughters of Albion, and two from Milton. I hope that plucking these three excerpts from his longer work can suggest how varied—not just how prophetic and opaque, but simply beautiful—so much of his poetry can be. (From the episode Poetry Friday) An excerpt from his long poem Milton. (From the episode Visionary Poems) Another excerpt from Milton, where Blake's personal mythology is given free reign over the city of London. (From the episode Cities Under Siege)   Listeners will forgive me for providing an episode that isn't quite brand new. But in the two months since I tentatively ended this podcast, I've seen that a way forward could be to bring out new episodes every few months. My thanks to those listeners who have responded positively to this idea. Please continue to keep your subscription to the podcast, to share it with others, and leave reviews wherever you listen. You can support Human Voices Wake Us here, or by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series. Email me at  [email protected].

An episode from 5/5/21: Tonight, I read part of John Keats's ⁠famous⁠ ⁠letter⁠ of October 27, 1818, where he talks about the poet and the poetic character. He asks the questions: how much of a poet's life is given up by their focus on poetry, by their people-watching and -listening, by their lack of social skills? How much of their lives are left over when they become so consumed (whether attracted or repelled) with the lives and words of others? You can support Human Voices Wake Us here, or by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series. Email me at  [email protected].

An episode from 12/30/20: In this second episode on Mesopotamian myth, we return to the story of Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh and Enkidu's destructive adventures lead directly to the latter's death, and here I read Enkidu’s deathbed speech, and the dream he has of the Underworld. The translations I read from are by ⁠Andrew George⁠ and N. K. Sandars. Other episodes on Mesopotamian myth can be found here. You can support Human Voices Wake Us here, or by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series. Email me at  [email protected].

An episode from 7/28/23: Tonight's episode looks in on history, creativity, and mourning from three different angles: In the first part, we hear scattered remarks from Bruce Springsteen over the years, about his low-fi and haunting 1982 album, ⁠Nebraska⁠. It is remarkable how the album was made by Springsteen, alone in his bedroom, with a cheap recorder. For someone who bridges and so seamlessly combines music of the fifties, sixties and seventies, Nebraska sounds nearly timeless. In the second part, I read a small section from Simon Schama's 1995 book, ⁠Landscape and Memory⁠. Here, he talks about not just his own Jewish ancestry, who hailed from the woods and forests of Ruthenia (on the border between today's Poland and Lithuania), but also about the fate of one Polish village's Jewish population, during and following World War Two. In the third part, I read from book 24 of ⁠Homer's Iliad⁠, translated by Richmond Lattimore. In one of the most moving scenes anywhere in Homer's epics, Priam, the king of Troy, pays a visit to Achilles, the greatest warrior on the Greek side. Achilles has only recently killed Priam's son, Hector, in battle, and the old man comes to Achilles for beg for his son's body back, so that he can be given a proper funeral and burial. You can support Human Voices Wake Us here, or by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series. Email me at [email protected].

An episode from 5/9/22: Tonight, I continue my five-part series called Notes from the Grid. (A print version of NFTG has since been published.) I suggest that we don’t need to be missionaries for the culture and politics and even religion we love, and nor should we assume that anybody else needs the very things that we depend upon—“All things can console.” Alongside this, I talk about the virtue of uncertainty, and the difficulties of living with ambiguity of all kinds. Other episodes from Notes from the Grid are here. You can support Human Voices Wake Us here, or by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series. Email me at [email protected].