558 Black Nature Writing (with Erin Sharkey)

Jacke kicks off the episode with an analysis of T.S. Eliot's underappreciated poem of urban alienation, "Preludes." Then scholar and translator Kate Deimling (The Story of the Marquis de Cressy by Marie-Jeanne Riccoboni) tells Jacke about an eighteenth-century Frenchwoman who was ...  Show more

As fans of the novel know, Frankenstein began with a flash of insight during an ill-fated holiday near Geneva in the summer of 1816, when the young woman then known as Mary Godwin contributed the modern-day Promethean tale to the ghost stories being shared by married lover Percy ...  Show more

En la vida, muchas veces adoptamos filosofías, expresiones e incluso comportamientos que no obedecen a nuestros contextos inmediatos; tal vez por mayor empatía con unas u otras, lo cual nos lleva a construir nuestras propias identidades. Otras veces nos quedamos con nuestros pasa ...  Show more

This episode begins with a rant. This rant, in particular, comes from Dan Engber - a science writer who loves animals but despises animal intelligence research. Dan told us that so much of the way we study animals involves tests that we think show a human is smart ... not the ...

Kitty Clive (1711-1785) was a well known English actress and singer at the famed Drury Lane Theater in London. Her career spanned many decades and took many forms over the years. She transformed from a dramatic lead to a comedic caricature of herself, evolving to win back public ...  Show more

It’s been said that history is written by the person at the typewriter. But who did the person who made history depend on? Often, it’s impossible to find out. But once in a while, we get lucky, and the story was not only recorded, it’s really good.
Well that’s what this p ...