Sept. 9, 2025
Jacke and Mike Palindrome in Conversation: Top 10 Animals in Literature
Revisit your favorite animals in literature by listening to an early appearance of Mike Palindrome, the President of the Literature Supporters Club, on the show. In January 2018, Mike joined Jacke for on the podcast to talk the Top 10 Animals in Literature. In the episode (Episode 128), Jacke and Mike conduct a draft, picking their favorite literary works with animals, big and small, that have enchanted or enraged or in some ways affected humanity. Works discussed include those by William Shakespeare, Herman Melville, Roald Dahl, T.S. Eliot, Leo Tolstoy, Franz Kafka, Ovid, William Blake, Beverly Cleary, and George Orwell, among many others. (Mike first joined Jacke in Episode 32, which was about Debut Novels.)
Episode 827: American Literature's War on Crime with Theodore Martin
The second half of the twentieth century was marked by an extreme increase in America's prison population, from roughly 250,000 inmates in 1940 to well over two million by 2008. At the same time, American readers were devouring mysteries, thrillers,…
Episode 826: Washington Irving with Phillip Lopate
At the time of Washington Irving's death, he was the most famous and widely praised American writer of his or any other era. But his reputation soon dwindled, and today he's known primarily as the author of just two stories ("The Legend of Sleepy Ho…
