112 Episodes

  1. Episode 72: Bread and Circuses (Juvenal's Satires)

    Published: 2/14/2020

  2. Episode 71: The Gods Depart (Statius' Thebaid)

    Published: 1/29/2020

  3. Episode 70: Rome's Forgotten Epic (Statius' Thebaid)

    Published: 9/9/2019

  4. Episode 69: Rome's Comic Novel (Petronius' Satyricon)

    Published: 8/26/2019

  5. Episode 68: Love Means Sin (Seneca's Phaedra)

    Published: 8/5/2019

  6. Episode 67: Jaws Dripping Blood (Seneca's Thyestes)

    Published: 7/17/2019

  7. Episode 66: Stoicism, Seneca, St. Paul

    Published: 6/26/2019

  8. Episode 65: Seneca and the Julio-Claudians (The Life of Seneca)

    Published: 3/30/2019

  9. Episode 64: Ovid's Exile (The Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto)

    Published: 2/23/2019

  10. Episode 63: All Is in Flux (Ovid's Metamorphoses, Books 11-15)

    Published: 2/8/2019

  11. Episode 62: A Curious Passion (Ovid's Metamorphoses, Books 6-10)

    Published: 1/27/2019

  12. Episode 61: Changes of Shape (Ovid's Metamorphoses, Books 1-5)

    Published: 1/14/2019

  13. Episode 60: How to Make Love to a Roman (Ovid's Art of Love and Cure for Love)

    Published: 12/10/2018

  14. Episode 59: Early Ovid (Amores, Heroides)

    Published: 11/13/2018

  15. Episode 58: She Caught Me with Her Eyes (Propertius' Poetry)

    Published: 10/10/2018

  16. Episode 57: The World Grows Dim and Black (Virgil's Aeneid, Books 10-12)

    Published: 9/1/2018

  17. Episode 56: I Shall Release Hell (Virgil's Aeneid, Books 7-9)

    Published: 8/13/2018

  18. Episode 55: Among the Shades (Virgil's Aeneid, Books 4-6)

    Published: 7/6/2018

  19. Episode 54: Out of Troy (Virgil's Aeneid, Books 1-3)

    Published: 5/31/2018

  20. Episode 53: Then Came Hard Iron (Virgil's Georgics)

    Published: 5/4/2018

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With millions of downloads, hundreds of hours of soundtracked content, and an overall emphasis on the cultural history behind famous works of literature, Literature and History is one of the most popular independent podcasts on its subject. Starting with Sumerian cuneiform in 3,100 BCE, Literature and History moves forward in chronological order through Assyriology, Egyptology, the Old Testament, Ancient Greece and Rome, the birth of Christianity, and the early Middle Ages. The show's current season is on early Islamic history. A typical episode (they average about two hours) features a general introduction to a work of literature, then a full summary of that work that expects no prior knowledge, and finally, an analysis of the cultural, biographical, and historical forces that gave rise to the work in question. Original symphonic and ambient background music is woven throughout each show, and all episodes offer free full, illustrated, footnoted transcriptions as well as quizzes for purposes of review. The show has no advertisements, and its host takes pride in a professional approach that avoids chitchat and ephemera and gets straight to the educational content. You can listen to the episodes in any order, although most listeners begin at the beginning and proceed from there, as the podcast itself is chronologically organized. Doug Metzger finished his Ph.D. in literature in 2011. His chief scholarly interest, following his dissertation work, continues to be 19th-century realism and postbellum American philosophy.