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 humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.
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 humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.
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 humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.
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 humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.
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 humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.
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 humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.
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 humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.
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 humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.
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 humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.
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 humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.
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 humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.
An episode from 9/9/25: Tonight, I read from three books:
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 humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.
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 humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.
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 humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com 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 humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.
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:
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 humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.
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 humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.
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 humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.
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 humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.
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:
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 humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.