Human Voices Wake Us

An episode from 7/6/26: For the past year or so, I’ve been putting out another podcast with the artist and educator Tom Hart over at his Substack, Men, an Explanation . You can find all the episodes we’ve done at Apple or Spotify where we talk about all kinds of things, but mostly creativity and how to be decent in the weird world of 2026. Today, I wanted to share one of those episodes with you, w...

An episode from 6/22/26: Tonight, we hear about the British poet Ted Hughes (1930-1998) , and the poem he said he spent the most time on, “The Gulkana.” The poem is named after a river in Alaska, and in this episode, I preface a reading of the poem with excerpts from his letters and biography about Hughes’ love for the outdoors and for fishing. In particular, in the last two decades of his life, H...

An episode from 6/1/26: Tonight, we delve into the significance of the moon in mythology, religion, and folklore. I read from the Taschen Book of Symbols , the Penguin Dictionary of Symbols , and Mircea Eliade’s Patterns in Comparative Religion . Finally, and most personally, I read about the history of Rosh Chodesh, the monthly Jewish holiday recognizing the New Moon. For this, I read a passage f...

An episode from 5/18/26: Tonight I read about the bear in folklore and mythology from two books everybody should have on their shelves: the Taschen Book of Symbols and the Penguin Dictionary of Symbols . Browsing through either puts you in contact with our best stories and, with the Taschen book, some of our best artwork. Next, I read Lord Byron’s (1788-1824) apocalyptic poem Darkness from 1816. Y...

An episode from 5/11/26: Tonight, I read passages on what the discoveries of agriculture and metallurgy meant for human beings, as reflected in the mythologies and rituals and stories that grew up around them. These passages are taken from sections 12 and 15 of Mircea Eliade’s History of Religious Ideas, Volume 1: From the Stone Age to the Eleusinian Mysteries . After Eliade’s rich catalogue of st...

An episode from 5/4/26: Tonight, I read the story of the French journalist Jean-Paul Kauffmann and his capture and three year captivity at the hands of Hezbollah. While held prisoner, he was given many books to read to pass the time, and what I share comes from the spy novelist John le Carré’s memoir, The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories from My Life . Next, I read from Caroline Fraser’s Murderland: Crime a...

An episode from 4/27/26: Tonight, I read about the destruction of two great houses of worship. The first is the cathedral of Old St. Paul’s, destroyed in 1666 in the Great Fire of London. My reading comes from Neil Hanson’s The Dreadful Judgement: The True Story of the Great Fire of London , and as mentioned, I link to the unabridged UK edition of the book, which is about a hundred pages longer th...

An episode from 4/20/26: Tonight, we delve into the world of cities. First, in a passage from Sam Quinones’s Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic , the town of Portsmouth, Ohio, is lovingly described in the decades before the epidemic. Next, a passage from Ben Wilson’s Metropolis: A History of the City, Humankind’s Great Invention describes the author’s travels to research the boo...

An episode from 4/13/26: Tonight, I read about the invention of the wheel and what it meant for the earliest communities of Europe and the Eurasian steppes, from David Anthony’s The Horse, the Wheel, and Language . After this, a few passages from Norman Longmate’s How We Lived Then: A History of Everyday Life During the Second World War tells the story of gasoline rationing in England during the w...

An episode from 12/9/24: Tonight's episode gathers together all of the readings I've done on this podcast from the poet ⁠William Blake⁠ (1757-1827). All of these poems can be found online at ⁠The Complete Poetry & Prose of William Blake⁠ : Blake & His Animals: One passage from Visions of the Daughters of Albion, and two from Milton. I hope that plucking these three excerpts from hi...

An episode from 1/10/23: Tonight we take a peek into the creative life of Charles Dickens (1812-1870). Through a handful of readings from Claire Tomalin’s biography of Dickens , we see how he was able to juggle, for almost a year, the writing of two novels for simultaneous serial publication. Then, thanks to a letter written by Fyodor Dostoevsky, who visited Dickens in London in 1862, we also hear...

An episode from 8/25/23: Tonight, I read ten essential poems from one of the great and most public poets of the last seventy years, Seamus Heaney (1939-2013). It isn’t hard to come by details of Heaney’s life, but ⁠Stepping Stones⁠ (where Heaney is interviewed at length in what amounts to an autobiography), is a good place to start. His poems are collected in ⁠100 Poems⁠ , and in the ⁠individual c...

An episode from 3/16/26: Tonight, I read about the eruption of the volcano Krakatoa in the year 535 CE, and the outbreak of plague in Constantinople (and elsewhere) only a few years later. It all comes from Susan Wise Bauer’s The History of the Medieval World: From the Conversion of Constantine to the First Crusade , and I give a handful of reasons why her histories for adults and children are def...

An episode from 3/9/26: Tonight, I read from Barbara Ehrenreich’s 2001 book Nickle and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America . After that, I talk about the recent TV show The Killing , as a way in to talking about our obsession and desire for criticism, objectivity, and certainty. Isn’t privacy and the subjective more fruitful? Both parts of this episode are related to essays in my book Notes from...

An episode from 3/2/26: Tonight, I read a single paragraph from two books that each had a profound effect on my understanding of religion, creativity, and a great deal else. The first comes from page one of Mircea Eliade’s History of Religious Ideas , and the second from John Eliot Gardiner’s Johann Sebastian Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven . What is your equivalent of these passages? Email me...

An episode from 2/23/2026: My new book of poetry, Time and the River: From Columbine to the Invention of Fire , is finally out. I spend this episode talking briefly about how always having the writing or reading of poetry close at hand and close in mind, has saved my life many times. I also read a new poem, "London, 1943." If you enjoy this podcast, please get a copy of the book, review...

An episode from 1/2/23: Tonight, I read a handful of voices from those living in Europe and the United States between 1900 and 1914. Rephrased only slightly, nearly all of their concerns (over technology, gender, nationalism, war, eugenics) feel like they could appear in the news or on the street today. Then and now, what is actually going on alongside all the dread? What can we learn from these v...

An episode from 2/9/2026: This is the second episode where I read from my upcoming book Time and the River: From Columbine to the Invention of Fire , which comes out on February 23. This time, I read seven of my favorite poems from the point of view of women. They are: Mr Cassian’s Good Friend, Emily Dickinson Völva Song to Sequana Epona The Seeress of Vix Miriam Morgan le Fay As I mention, more i...

An episode from 2/2/2026: For the next few episodes I’ll be reading poems from my book Time and the River: From Columbine to the Invention of Fire , which comes out on February 23. As the title says, it begins with the Columbine high school shooting in 1999 and travels back to the invention of fire almost two million years ago. Along the way, there’s creativity from prehistoric Europe to Edward Ho...

An episode from 1/26/2026: Tonight, I read two poems from the American poet William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878), “Earth” and “The River, by Night.” Just as with the episode on Bryant’s life from earlier this month, I hope this episode brings his writing and poetry to the attention of more readers. The best way to support the podcast is by leaving a review on Apple or Spotify, sharing it with others,...

An episode from 12/7/22: This week, I am reposting what is perhaps my favorite episode of Human Voices Wake Us , first posted back in late 2022. We enter into the early years of Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890), from his birth in the village of Zundert in the Netherlands, to his time in the Borinage mining region of Belgium. It was there, at the age of twenty-seven—and after years of personal and prof...

An episode from 1/12/2026: Tonight, I read from the oldest religious poetry from India, the collection of 1,028 ritual hymns known as the The Rig Veda . Specifically, I read from the most popular story found there, the defeat of the serpent Vrtra by the god Indra and the freeing of the waters of the world. I begin by telling the story briefly and then sharing examples of the short references to it...

An episode from 1/5/2026: Tonight, I read a handful of passages from Gilbert Muller’s William Cullen Bryant: Author of America . During his lifetime, Bryant (1794-1878) was the most popular poet in America as well as one of the country’s most trusted and influential editors and journalists. Through Bryant’s own words and those of his contemporaries, I trace the story of that double-prominence, and...

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 biographer...

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...