Podcasts by The Spouter-Inn; or, A Conversation with Great Books
Suzanne and Chris talk about great books—but what does "great" even mean?
Further podcasts by Suzanne and Chris @ Megaphonic.fm
Podcast on the topic Bücher
All episodes
71. Troilus and Criseyde. from 2023-10-10T13:45
Allas, of me, unto the worldes ende,
Shal neither been ywriten nor ysonge
No good word, for thise bokes wol me shende.
O, rolled shal I been on ma...
70b. Bonus: Dick Davis on Translating Persian Poetry. from 2023-09-19T02:01
There’s a feeling, I think, in English poetry that you have to be original. That feeling isn’t really there in Persian poetry until the very modern per...
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70. Layli and Majnun. from 2023-09-05T20:44
Her voice was sweet and liquid, like a stream
That lulls all other streams to sleep and dream;
Her eyes like doe’s eyes, whose dark gaze would ma...
69b. Bonus: Mark Sundaram and Aven McMaster on Etymology. from 2023-07-15T12:05
Language is so personal and internal. It exists in your head. You can close your eyes and plug your ears and not engage with the outside world at all, ...
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69. The Etymologies. from 2023-06-30T21:05
The word “amicus” — meaning “friend” — comes from a derivation, as if it were “animi custos”, or “guardian of the soul”. And this is well put! The...
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68. The Consolation of Philosophy. from 2023-06-07T22:40
“Now I know,” she said, “that other, more serious cause of your sickness: you have forgotten what you are. So I really understand why you are ill and h...
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67. The Song of Songs. from 2023-05-11T14:30
I come to my garden, my sister, my bride;
I gather my myrrh with my spice,
I eat my honeycomb with my honey,
I drink my wine with my milk.
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66. Antigone. from 2023-04-02T13:01
are you mockers of me
you grabbing old men
are you laughers at me
though I’m not yet gone
O springs of the rivers of Thebes
O reaches of...
65. The Epic of Gilgamesh. from 2023-02-26T13:55
‘My friend, whom I loved so dear,
who with me went through every danger,
my friend Enkidu, whom I loved so dear,
who with me went th...
64b. Bonus: Sassan Tabatabai on Blind Owl. from 2023-02-11T19:27
In classical narrative poetry, there’s these formulaic repetitions that come up, right? And then we have these very weird formulaic repetitions that co...
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64. Blind Owl. from 2023-01-30T21:35
I had thought about death and the decomposition of all the particles in my body many times—to the extent that it didn’t frighten me—in fact, my true wi...
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63. Midwinter Day. from 2023-01-19T20:33
I know the rest of the night will be as devoted to work as love as I’m now resting in this expensive sentence and in the end I’ll spend it fast writing...
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62. The Waste Land. from 2023-01-03T21:00
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgart...
61. Native Tongue. from 2022-12-20T16:33
Encodings were precious. The little girls heard the stories at their mother’s knees, when their mothers had time to tell them…. How women, in the long ...
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60b. Bonus: Jared Pechacek on The Two Towers. from 2022-11-05T15:11
The Two Towers’ landscape passages… a lot of the book is from Sam’s POV, and he’s the gardener, and Ithilien is packed with flower names in a way that ...
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60. The Two Towers. from 2022-10-01T15:00
The second part of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings.
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59. Harriet the Spy. from 2022-09-25T17:53:34
“I want to know everything, everything,” screeched Harriet suddenly, lying back and bouncing up and down on the bed. “Everything in the world, everythi...
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58. Invisible Man. from 2022-09-04T13:00
In the South everyone knew you, but coming North was a jump into the unknown. How many days could you walk the streets of the big city without encounte...
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57. Ulysses. from 2022-06-16T04:02
—Mr Brandes accepts it, Stephen said, as the first play of the closing period.
—Does he? What doe...
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56. Mrs. Dalloway. from 2022-05-24T23:01
Clarissa had a theory in those days—they had heaps of theories, always theories, as young people have. It was to explain the feeling they had of dissatisfa...
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55b. Bonus: Sandow Birk on the Divine Comedy. from 2022-05-16T17:11
I’ve always struggled, since I went to art school, with the question of: What is the career of making paintings in the twenty-first century? Of sitting...
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55. Paradiso. from 2022-04-30T17:23
At this point I admit my defeat;
no poet, comic or tragic, ever was
more outdone by his theme than I am now
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54. The Rings of Saturn. from 2022-04-07T17:23
W.G. Sebald's curious book The Rings of Saturn.
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53. Confessions. from 2022-03-07T22:55
Our cluster on Time begins with Augustine's Confessions.
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52. Black Skin, White Masks. from 2022-02-21T19:22
I came into this world anxious to uncover the meaning of things, my soul desirous to be at the origin of the world, and here I am an object among other...
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51. I Am Woman. from 2022-01-15T20:09
Admit this, all of you. I laugh too loud, can’t hold my brownie properly in polite company and am apt to call shit “shit.” I can’t be trusted to be loy...
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50. The Hereford Mappa Mundi. from 2021-12-24T20:15
In this territory are the Dog-headed people.
Here live the Griste, an extremely wicked people, fo...
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49. Watchmen. from 2021-11-16T17:00
When news of this being’s phenomenal genesis was first released to the world, a certain phrase was used that has—at varying times—been attributed both ...
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48b. Bonus: Melissa Moreton on Hidden Stories: Books Along the Silk Roads. from 2021-10-19T14:20
Melissa Moreton, codicologist, joins us to discuss an exhibit at the Aga Khan Museum that Suzanne co-curated.
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47b. Bonus: Daniel Heath Justice on Animals. from 2021-07-14T17:30
Daniel Heath Justice, author of the books "Badger" and "Raccoon", on animals in literature and in real life.
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46b. Bonus: Anna Wilson on Bear. from 2021-06-22T14:10
Medievalist and fanfiction scholar Anna Wilson puts Marian Engel's Bear in new contexts.
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45. The Conference of the Birds. from 2021-06-04T16:44
Farid ud-Din Attar’s medieval poem The Conference of the Birds.
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44b. Bonus: Oriana Schwindt on The Fellowship of the Ring. from 2021-04-30T14:40
Oriana Schwindt (from Tolkien podcast By-The-Bywater) on The Fellowship of the Ring.
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44. The Fellowship of the Ring. from 2021-04-20T16:21
The first part of J.R.R. Tolkien’s foundational fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings.
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43. Braiding Sweetgrass. from 2021-04-05T13:09
Robin Wall Kimmerer’s collection of essays about botany and Indigenous knowledge.
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42b. Bonus: Nahir Otaño Gracia on Laxdaela Saga. from 2021-03-24T18:22
Medievalist Nahir I. Otaño Gracia joins us to talk about Laxdæla Saga and other Icelandic sagas.
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42. Laxdaela Saga. from 2021-03-15T20:15
The medieval Icelandic Laxdæla Saga, also known as The Saga of the People of Laxárdalr.
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41. Exile and Pride. from 2021-02-07T22:00
Eli Clare’s memoir and call to activism, Exile and Pride.
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40. The Boys in the Band. from 2021-01-14T18:23:55
Mart Crowley’s groundbreaking 1968 play about gay lives.
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38b. Bonus: Luther Obrock on the Mahabharata. from 2020-12-22T15:04
Luther Obrock, scholar of Sanskrit poetry, joins us to talk about the Mahabharata and read from the Bhagavad Gita.
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38. Mahabharata. from 2020-12-21T17:50
The Mahabharata is an enormous Sanskrit epic of ancient India, which includes the Bhagavad Gita.
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37. Times Square Red, Times Square Blue. from 2020-11-14T19:30
Samuel R. Delany's memoir/theoretical tract about sex and the city.
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36b. Bonus: Shamma Boyarin on the Disciplina Clericalis. from 2020-10-27T18:30
Shamma Boyarin, assistant professor at the University of Victoria, joins us to discuss Petrus Alfonsi's Disciplina Clericalis.
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36. Disciplina Clericalis. from 2020-10-20T14:30
Petrus Alphonsi’s twelfth-century collection of aphorisms and (often salacious) short stories.
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35b. Bonus: Loretta Todd on Monkey Beach. from 2020-09-24T14:30
Director Loretta Todd on her feature film adaptation of Eden Robinson’s Monkey Beach.
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35. Monkey Beach. from 2020-09-21T14:00
Eden Robinson’s debut novel is a coming-of-age story that has elements of horror and magic realism, but is deeply rooted in the writer’s own Indigenous Haisla and Heiltsuk culture.
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34b. Bonus: Karla Mallette on Purgatorio. from 2020-09-08T17:45
Karla Mallette, scholar of medieval Mediterranean literature, on Dante’s Purgatorio.
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33. W, or the Memory of Childhood. from 2020-08-04T17:11
George Perec's curious novel braids together a story of a sport-obsessed island with an autobiographical attempt to remember a childhood haunted by loss.
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32b. Bonus: David Hadbawnik on the Aeneid. from 2020-07-20T16:30
We’re joined by David Hadbawnik, poet, translator, and scholar, to talk about his exciting translation of the Aeneid.
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32. The Aeneid. from 2020-07-13T19:45
The Aeneid, Virgil’s epic poem about the founding of Rome, includes a long section where Aeneas and his men engage in sports at the beach. What’s that all about?
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31. Beyond a Boundary. from 2020-06-23T21:05
C.L.R. James's Beyond a Boundary is considered one of the great books of sports writing — but while it talks about cricket, it's also an autobiography, an analysis of colonialism, and an inquiry in...
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30b. Bonus: Reading During Crisis, Part Two. from 2020-06-12T15:40
We check in with Carissa Harris, Alison Kinney, Simone de Rochefort, and Shamma Boyarin to ask how the months of social isolation and the recent activism against police violence are affecting them ...
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30. Vanity Fair. from 2020-06-01T22:40
“I am alone in the world,” said the friendless girl. “I have nothing to look for but what my own labour can bring me; and while that little pink-faced chit Amelia, with not ...
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29b. Bonus: Lee Maracle on Great Expectations. from 2020-05-18T16:00
Lee Maracle, author of Memory Serves, joins us to discuss Great Expectations (and much more).
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29. Great Expectations. from 2020-05-11T17:00
Charles Dickens's Great Expectations is the tale of Philip Pirrip, better known as Pip, a young blacksmith’s apprentice who unexpectedly finds he has been given the means to become a gentleman of l...
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28b. Bonus: Jess Henderson on Emma. from 2020-04-29T15:20
Jess Henderson, contract faculty at University of Toronto, Missisauga, recently led a virtual reading group on Emma, so we asked her to join us to share some hot takes.
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27b. Bonus: Reading During Crisis. from 2020-04-03T15:00
In late March 2020, in the first few weeks of the social distancing brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, Chris and Suzanne checked in with a few friends about how they’re handling this new stres...
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27. The Decameron. from 2020-04-01T14:10
Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron, a collection of 100 short stories told during a plague.
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26b. Bonus: Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi on Persepolis. from 2020-03-27T15:00
Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi, Professor of History and Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations at the University of Toronto, on Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis and modern Iran.
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26. Persepolis. from 2020-03-19T15:00
Marjane Satrapi's comics memoir Persepolis, about growing up in Tehran during the Iranian Revolution.
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25. The Jungle. from 2020-03-02T19:22
Upton Sinclair’s novel The Jungle (1906) describes the lives of the working class in America by following Jurgis Rudkus, who moves with his family from Lithuania to the US at the turn of the centur...
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24b. Bonus: Lesley S. Curtis on Stella. from 2020-02-21T16:25
We talk with Lesley S. Curtis about Stella, Émeric Bergeaud’s allegory of the Haitian Revolution and the first Haitian novel.
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24. The Black Jacobins. from 2020-02-14T16:30
Our cluster on Revolution(s) begins with C.L.R. James’s history of the Haitian Revolution, The Black Jacobins.
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23. Memory Serves. from 2020-01-22T16:22
Memory Serves is a challenging and compelling collection of oratories by author, activist, and Elder of the Stó:lo Nation Lee Maracle.
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22. Beloved. from 2019-12-19T18:24
As 2019 draws to a close, Chris and Suzanne remember Toni Morrison, who passed away this year, by reading Beloved. It’s a difficult book—and a difficult book to talk about—but also a beautifully an...
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21. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. from 2019-11-27T16:11
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a classic work of children’s literature by Roald Dahl. It tells the story of Charlie Bucket and his visit to the fantabulous chocolate factory run by the reclus...
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20b. Bonus: Irina Dumitrescu on Food Writing. from 2019-11-18T16:00
Irina Dumitrescu is a professor of medieval literature at the University of Bonn, but she also has a secret life as a food essayist.
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20. How to Cook a Wolf. from 2019-11-15T16:00
M.F.K. Fisher’s How to Cook a Wolf is a book about food written during World War 2. It’s full of meditations on hunger—the wolf clawing at the door—and recipes for dishes that you might eat to surv...
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19b. Bonus: Simone de Rochefort on Ernest Hemingway. from 2019-11-04T16:00
Simone de Rochefort is a Senior Video Producer at Polygon, where she co-hosts the podcast The Polygon Show. She’s also one of the hosts of the tech podcast Rocket on Relay FM, which recently celebr...
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19. A Moveable Feast. from 2019-11-01T15:27
A Moveable Feast is Ernest Hemingway’s memoir of being a young and often hungry writer surrounded by the writers, artists, and waiters of 1920s Paris.
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18b. Bonus: Liza Blake on Margaret Cavendish. from 2019-10-21T18:10
Liza Blake, Margaret Cavendish scholar, joins us to give a bit more context to The Blazing World and its glittering glories.
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18. The Blazing World. from 2019-10-19T03:30
The Description of a New World, Called The Blazing-World, more commonly known simply as The Blazing World, is a philosophical flight of fancy by Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle.
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17. Hayy ibn Yaqzan. from 2019-10-01T20:30
Abu Bakr ibn Tufayl’s Hayy ibn Yaqzan (sometimes translated as “Alive, son of Awake”—though the title is the main character’s name) is a curious philosophical thought experiment from twelfth-centur...
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16b. Bonus: Michael Collins on Middlemarch. from 2019-09-16T13:36
Writer, podcaster, and personal trainer Michael Collins joins us to talk about his favourite book, George Eliot's Middlemarch.
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16. Middlemarch. from 2019-09-13T15:00
We begin our cluster on Philosophical novels with Middlemarch, George Eliot’s massive and masterful “study of provincial life”.
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15b. Bonus: Emily Wilson on the Odyssey. from 2019-08-26T14:30
Emily Wilson, professor and translator of the Odyssey, joins us to discuss the art of translation.
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15. The Odyssey. from 2019-08-23T15:11
We finish our water/ocean cluster with Homer's epic poem The Odyssey.
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14b. Bonus: Steve Mentz on The Tempest. from 2019-08-12T15:45
Professor Steve Mentz emerges from the Atlantic to discuss The Tempest, blue humanities, and what happens when you consider the ocean's perspective.
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14. The Tempest. from 2019-08-09T15:00
The Tempest is one of William Shakespeare’s last plays—and one of his most curious.
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13. To the Lighthouse. from 2019-07-18T14:15
Our Water/Ocean cluster begins with Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse.
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12b. Bonus: Damian Fleming on Moby-Dick. from 2019-07-08T15:33
Medievalist and Moby-Dick fan Damian Fleming joins us to keep the conversation going about this great book.
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12. Moby-Dick. from 2019-07-05T01:19
Moby-Dick; or, The Whale is a massive book. It’s a story about obsession, an encyclopedia of whale facts, and an unexpected love story. It’s also the source of the name of our podcast!
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11. The Autobiography of Malcolm X. from 2019-06-19T14:22
The Autobiography of Malcolm X (as told to Alex Haley) emerges from a specific time and place and yet, despite feeling very much of that moment, still resonates with issues that American culture is...
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10b. Bonus: Peter Coviello on Leaves of Grass. from 2019-06-03T15:49
Peter Coviello, author of Tomorrow’s Parties: Sex and the Untimely in Nineteenth-Century America, joins us to talk about Walt Whitman and Leaves of Grass.
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10. Leaves of Grass. from 2019-05-31T12:00
It’s Walt Whitman’s 200th birthday today! Suzanne and Chris are celebrating by rereading Leaves of Grass, the book of poetry that Whitman kept writing, revising, and expanding throughout his life. ...
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9b. Bonus: Sarah Chamberlain on Frankenstein. from 2019-05-27T16:24
Sarah Chamberlain, host of the Canadian horror movie podcast A Part Of Our Scare-itage, joins us to talk about the many movie adaptations of Frankenstein.
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9. Frankenstein. from 2019-05-23T14:10
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a story that seems familiar to everyone—even people who haven’t read the novel (or seen any of the movie adaptations). But the novel fleshes out the story that everyo...
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8b. Bonus: Anthony Oliveira on Paradise Lost. from 2019-05-06T15:00
Anthony Oliveira, host of The Devil’s Party, a podcast that has been slowly and lovingly working its way through Paradise Lost, joins us to talk about Milton's epic poem.
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8. Paradise Lost. from 2019-05-03T15:01
John Milton’s Paradise Lost offers fantastic poetry, and a deeply realized retelling of the Biblical tale of Adam and Eve’s fall from the Garden of Eden. But Chris and Suzanne still struggle with M...
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7. Inferno. from 2019-04-18T15:07
Dante’s Inferno, the first section of his Divine Comedy, is a medieval poem in which our author is given a guided tour of Hell.
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6. The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. from 2019-04-04T12:44
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (written by her partner Gertrude Stein) recounts the couple’s lives in early twentieth-century Paris among painters, writers, and composers—and, during the Firs...
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5. Little Women. from 2019-03-19T15:11
Suzanne and Chris look at Louisa May Alcott's novel Little Women.
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4b. Bonus: Timothy Perry on The Book of Peace. from 2019-03-06T18:00
Timothy Perry, medieval manuscript and early book librarian at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library at the University of Toronto, shows us a newly acquired medieval manuscript of Christine de Pizan...
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4. The Book of the City of Ladies. from 2019-03-05T15:39
The Book of the City of Ladies, by Christine de Pizan, is a medieval feminist classic.
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3. The Metamorphoses. from 2019-02-19T16:55
Suzanne and Chris discuss Ovid's Metamorphoses—and translation, lost language, the natural world, gender and sexuality, and medieval interpretations of these tales of transformations.
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2. The Symposium. from 2019-02-04T15:27
Suzanne and Chris discuss love and Plato’s Symposium (and catty drinking parties).
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1. The Iliad. from 2019-01-18T15:30
Suzanne and Chris begin their conversations about great books with a very big and very old one: Homer’s Iliad. This Ancient Greek poem about the Trojan War is, of course, widely known, but if you h...
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0. Coming Soon. from 2019-01-07T01:08:13
Suzanne and Chris talk about great books—but what does "great" even mean?
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