409 "Fear and Trembling" (The Story of Abraha...

We often say it's important for a person to be "authentic," but what does that mean? Why is that necessarily a good thing? In this episode, Jacke talks to author Hadley Suter (Becoming Stendhal: The Performance of Authenticity and the Making of a Novelist) about the French noveli ...  Show more

Charlotte Brontë and Elizabeth Gaskell, two of the leading novelists of the 19th century, shared a remarkable literary friendship. After Charlotte's death, Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Brontë became one of the most famous--and controversial--literary biographies ever written. In t ...  Show more

To wrap up our coverage of Kierkegaard, we consider his religious stage of development through this 1843 text analyzing the Biblical story of Abraham. Can we understand, much less admire, an attitude whereby you think God has commanded you to kill your son and you gladly go along ...  Show more

Friends, if the intention of an author is to convince people to read and think about what he’s written, the author of Sunday's first reading has done his job well. We hear the deeply troubling story of Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his own son, Isaac. How do we reconcile ...

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rich and radical ideas of Soren Kierkegaard, often called the father of Existentialism.In 1840 a young Danish girl called Regine Olsen got engaged to her sweetheart – a modish and clever young man called Søren Kierkegaard. The two were deeply i ...  Show more

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rich and radical ideas of Soren Kierkegaard, often called the father of Existentialism.In 1840 a young Danish girl called Regine Olsen got engaged to her sweetheart – a modish and clever young man called Søren Kierkegaard. The two were deeply i ...  Show more