An episode from 8/10/26: Tonight, I read about the childhood and adolescence of the actor Al Pacino (born in 1940), as told in his wonderful memoir Sonny Boy. (I also recommend the audio version, read by Pacino himself). We also hear about Pacino now, and what looking back at his upbringing in the South Bronx means to him.
After a brief detour on Charlotte Brontë’s 1847 novel, Jane Eyre (and recommending that audiobook, too), I read about the early years of Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962), as told in Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns’s documentary companion book, The Roosevelts: An Intimate History. Here, an orphan by the age of ten, a mostly unloved and unnoticed Eleanor is sent to a boarding school in London, where she finds love and belonging for the first time in her life.
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, 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. I also have a YouTube channel where I share poems and excerpts from these books, mostly as YouTube shorts.
Email me at humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.
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