Tonight, I’m thrilled to read a poem that I began working on three years ago on the life, teachings, and mysticism of the Greek philosopher, Pythagoras (c. 570- c.495 BCE). I am also thrilled that the poem is being simultaneously published at ⁠The Basilisk Tree⁠. Many thanks to its editor, Bryan Helton, for coordinating all……

An episode from 2/13/21: George Orwell’s 1933 memoir of voluntary poverty, Down and Out in Paris and London, can still rip your heart out. Tonight, I read a few passages from it. Nobody has ever brought written about the reality of poverty as viscerally and sympathetically as him. Don’t forget to support Human Voices Wake……

An episode from 3/21/21: Tonight, I read from three newspaper articles by George Orwell on the outcry over Allied bombings of German cities during World War Two, and the aftermath of the atomic bombs being dropped on Japan. Nobody writes about war like George Orwell, and it’s refreshing to hear someone suggest that there’s no point……

An episode from 10/14/21: What does culture and education mean when literacy, let alone the owning of books, is so rare? Tonight, I read two chapters from Peter Ackroyd’s book, ⁠Albion: The Origins of the English Imagination⁠. The first covers education in eighth-century England, and specifically the life of the Venerable Bede. The second is……

An episode from 10/17/21: The death Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) came after a long series of illnesses. By then, friends, admirers and hangers-on sought out the composer in his last days. Tonight, I readJan Swafford’s account in his incredible biography, Beethoven: Anguish & Triumph. Swafford’s book also includes one of the most moving details from any……

An episode from 11/4/22: Tonight, I read ten essential poems from the American poet, Robert Lowell (1917-1977). Lowell was perhaps the last American poet we could possibly call “famous” during his lifetime. The combination of his early success and subsequent struggles with mental illness meant that the public witnessed all of it, from his slow……

An episode from 11/4/22: Tonight, I talk about creativity and wonder what actors and writers have in common. In the most general sense of finding solace in the anecdotes from the working lives of other creative people, I also mention the revelation that Inside the Actor’s Studio was, for me, in my early twenties. The……

What can the Poetic and Prose Eddas, the Icelandic sagas, and skaldic poetry tell us about the most important god in the Norse pantheon, Odin? Tonight, I devote an entire episode to Odin’s many masks: as poet and shaman, as god of death and war, and as the perfect embodiment of the world as the……

An episode from 10/27/22: Tonight, I talk about our love for horror and true crime, and ask: what makes a story truly frightening, instead of just entertaining? What kinds of movies or books, or ways of storytelling, take us beyond entertainment to true horror, to actual fear? For instance, how does the disturbing story of……

An episode from 10/19/22: In this second episode on Norse Mythology, I read from the creation myths found in the poem, “Voluspa,” found in the Poetic Edda, and from its corresponding sections in the Prose Edda. I also read from commentaries on these sections. The translation of the Poetic Edda that I read from is……

An episode from 10/11/22:  Tonight I talk about a dear friend from my youth, who made a great impact on my late teens and early twenties. Somehow he was the person who introduced me to Huston Smith’s World Religions, the poetry of Seamus Heaney and Francis Thompson, the novels of Hermann Hesse, and so much……

An episode from 10/3/22: Over the course of forty years, Ted Hughes (1930-1998) wrote some of the best poetry of the twentieth (or any) century. Tonight, I read twelve of Hughes’s essential poems, where we see his primal concerns—the violence but also beauty of nature and animal life; mythology and religion; and his own autobiography—expressed……

An episode from 9/23/22: What twentieth-century American poet devoted so much time to the environment, and to humanity’s place in it, other than Robinson Jeffers (1887-1962)? What other poet devoted his powers not to the puzzles of Modernism but to the plain-spoken strengths of science, prophecy, and myth? Tonight I read ten of Jeffers’ essential……

An episode from 9/15/22: For the next year or more, my series on The Great Myths will focus on Norse mythology. Tonight I introduce the subject and read one of its foundational texts, a poem from the Poetic Edda called the “Voluspa.” The Voluspa takes its form as a prophecy spoken by a female seeress,……

An episode from 9/7/22: Tonight I spend an hour talking about Stephen King’s 1983 novel, ⁠Pet Sematary⁠. The anxieties attached to being a parent have rarely book put this memorably, cloaked as it is in the kind foreordained doom we expect from Grimm’s Fairy Tales. Does the book also succeed so well because King’s usual……

An episode from 8/30/22: “Give Me a Tarantula” is a scattering of thoughts on: Don’t forget to join Human Voices Wake Us on Patreon, or sign up for our newsletter here. You can also support the podcast by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely……

Tonight’s episode is a response to those wonderful lines from William Carlos Williams: “It is ridiculous what airs we put on to seem profound, while our hearts gasp dying for want of love.” If these lines have the ring of truth, what aspects of our lives have we built up so meticulously, when all we……

An episode from 8/22/22: Tonight we leave the Celtic myths with an overview of all the episodes devoted to it, The Great Myths #8-18 (⁠which can be listened to here⁠). Then I read one final story, of Cuchulainn’s fight with Ferdiad, from Thomas Kinsella’s translation of the Táin bo Cúailnge.  As usual, heroism, the supernatural,……

An episode from 8/12/22: Everybody knows the most famous soliloquy in all of drama, or at least the first line of it: ⁠“To be or not to be, that is the question,”⁠ from act three of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Tonight, I delve into the speech and try to figure out why it works so well not……

An episode from 8/4/22: Tonight, listen to my four-part episode on the atomic bomb, from its development, to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and after. I draw almost entirely from the words of those who were there. The full text of the quotations used here can be found ⁠in the blog versions of these……