The History of Literature

Jacke talks to author James Bailey about his critically acclaimed biography Like a Cat Loves a Bird: The Nine Lives of Muriel Spark. PLUS J. Michael Lennon, friend and biographer of Norman Mailer (

Jacke gets ready for the release of Christopher Nolan's Odyssey, the rare instance of a summer blockbuster based on a literary classic, with some help from classics scholars Daniel Mendelsohn (The Odyssey,

As a literary classic turns 300, Jacke talks to the University of Oxford's David Womersley about Jonathan Swift, the nature of satire, and The Cambridge Anniversary Edition of Gulliver's Travels, which Womersley ed...

Thanks in part to beloved films like Marty (1955) and Network (1976), Paddy Chayefsky is often regarded as the greatest writer of television's first Golden Age and the most acclaimed screenwriter in Hollywood history. But who was Chayefsky? What made his writing stand out? And how well do his works hold up in 2026? In this episode, as America turns 250, Jack...

What is it like to translate Shakespeare into another language? How does one attempt to capture that transcendent magic so familiar to English speakers? In this episode, Jacke talks to writer, editor, and translator Daniel Hahn (If This Be...