Human Voices Wake Us

• #207 - Death, the Gods, and Endless Life in Ancient Egypt

  An episode from 11/24/25: Tonight, I read from one of the best books on religion in ancient Egypt, Erik Hornung’s Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt: The One and the Many. Few have written so lucidly on the subject: Egyptians were actually obsessed with life and its renewal, not in wallowing death; the “monotheistic” reforms of Akhenaten were not visionary at all, but largely practical and pretty brutal; the essence of Egyptian religion was its ability to go on and on, adding to its own profuseness wherever it could, and resisting systemization and dogmas at every turn; and so on.I open the episode with a quotation about William Blake from Peter Ackroyd’s biography of him.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, due out next year, is now available for preorder. Other books include 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.Email me at [email protected].

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• #206 - The Discovery of Indo-European Languages - 1876

  An episode from 11/17/25: Tonight, I read a section from David Anthony’s book The Horse, the Wheel, and Language. It is a wonderfully written account of the archeological and linguistic attempts to discover the origins of the Indo-European language families. The part I read from retells the famous story of Sir William Jones, the Welsh linguist and lawyer stationed in British India in the late eighteenth century, and the eureka moment he had upon realizing that Sanskrit, Latin, Greek (and so many other languages) are related. Anthony also sums up the political, nationalist (and, eventually, simply racist) uses to which this discovery was put.I open the episode with some small remarks on Johann Sebastian Bach, and an anecdote found in Christoph Wolff’s Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician.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, due out next year, is now available for preorder. Other books include 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.Email me at [email protected].

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• #205: Learning to Read, c. 2000 BCE

  An episode from 11/10/25: Tonight, I talk about literacy and education in the ancient world, both the fascinating aspects of memorization and of what “reading” meant back (it was much closer to reading shorthand today), and the precarious reality that anyone who underwent scribal training in Mesopotamia or Egypt might not even live long enough to see their education through. The book I read from is David Carr’s Writing on the Tablet of the Heart: Origins of Scripture and Literature. I also begin the episode with a small passage on the life of CIA spymaster James Angleton, from Tom Mangold’s biography of him, Cold Warrior. What other podcast would combine these two into one satisfying episode?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, due out next year, is now available for preorder. Other books include 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. Email me at [email protected].

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• #204: Walt Whitman's "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry," 1856

  An episode from 11/3/25: Tonight, I read what is perhaps Walt Whitman’s greatest poem, “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry.” I also set it in the context of Whitman’s life as a poet: he wrote and published the first edition of Leaves of Grass in 1855 and was certain that the book would have an immediate cultural and national impact. When this didn’t happen, and while Whitman was preparing the second edition of Leaves of Grass only a year later, part of his response is expressed in “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry”—whose original title was “Sun-Down Poem.” Here is the most vivid and memorable expression of what I’ve called Whitman’s Mystical Poetry, where he connects readers past and present with his own life. Rarely has an artist’s experience of disappointment and loneliness (and sense of wish-fulfillment) produced something like this.I read from the first published edition of the poem, which can be found here.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, due out next year, is now available for preorder. Other books include 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.Email me at [email protected].

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• #203: Bruce Springsteen Talks About "Nebraska" - 1984

  An episode from 10/24/25: I’ve been waiting in vain for a cold to pass so I can record a new episode. As that doesn’t seem to be happening anytime soon, the new movie about Bruce Springsteen reminded me that a few years ago I recorded an episode about his 1982 album Nebraska. While the original episode itself is much longer, tonight’s episode presents only the part about Springsteen. I hope you enjoy it, and I hope it gets a few of you out there to listen to Nebraska again.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, due out next year, is now available for preorder. Other books include 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. Email me at [email protected].

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