One True Podcast

Thank you for making 2025 such a special year for One True Podcast! Together, we devoted shows to the centenary of In Our Time, to our One True Book Club discussion of W.H. Hudson’s The Purple Land, to the 100th anniversary of The Great Gatsby, and to so much more. We’re so grateful to all of our amazing guests for enriching and enlivening our program, and to all of our listeners for their loyalty.As our gift back to you, we close 2025 in our favorite of ways: we welcome Suzanne del Gizzo onto the show to discuss a season-appropriate piece of Hemingway’s work. This year, we discuss “Christmas in Paris,” Hemingway’s poignant, melancholy sketch describing a young couple away from home for the holidays.Before we welcome in Suzanne, old friend Mackenzie Astin narrates Hemingway’s “Christmas in Paris” to put us in the spirit. Make sure you keep listening after the episode to be treated to a rendition of “Noël à Paris,” performed by Bill Hemminger (piano) and Melody Winfrey (vocals).Wishing you all happiness over the holidays, and we’ll see you on the other side.

One True Podcast would never let 2025 end without one more episode celebrating the centenary of In Our Time, so today we discuss a classic short story from that collection: “The Doctor and the Doctor’s Wife.”Scholar (and podcaster) Scott Yarbrough visits us from Charleston to lead us through the many elements of this great story: Dr. Adams’s quarrel with Dick Boulton, the doctor’s icy relationship with his wife, and finally his moment of connection with his son. Along the way, we touch on the ethics of log stealing, the implications of Christian Scientism, Hemingway’s captivating early prose style, Nick’s role in the narrative, and whether or not this story qualifies as one of Hemingway’s “greatest hits.”Join us for a trip into the Michigan woods and a guided tour through “The Doctor and the Doctor’s Wife.” We know where there’s black squirrels!

The prominent Faulkner scholar Ahmed Honeini first joined us in 2024 to discuss the rivalry and intertextuality between Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner.Clearly, in a topic so vast, devoted to the two leading titans of 20th-century American literature, one puny, inexhaustible episode was not enough. So, Ahmed Honeini agreed to come back onto One True Podcast to continue our pursuit of Hemingway and his contemporaries. We discuss Faulkner’s great works, how his concept of mortality compares with Hemingway’s, the inadequacy of language, Hemingway’s iceberg theory, and Ahmed’s favorite moment in all of Faulkner.Join us for this wonderful conversation with the Founder of the Faulkner Studies in the UK Research Network! 

The Great Gatsby celebrates its 100th birthday this year, and you knew that One True Podcast couldn’t let 2025 go by without joining the celebration. We mark the centenary of this great American novel by marking its importance in American literary history as well as the life and career of Ernest Hemingway.Fitzgerald scholar William Blazek visits us from his post at Liverpool Hope University to discuss the novel’s legacy, its glorious language, and its ambiguous themes; Gatsby as a complex and misunderstood character; how Gatsby would have struck the young Hemingway; and so many other aspects of this magnificent work.Like Nick Carraway just remembering he is turning thirty, One True Podcast hopes it isn’t too late to join the roaring celebration of Gatsby at 100!Thanks as always for supporting One True Podcast!

Michael Deagler, the 2025 PEN/Hemingway winner for Early Sobrieties, shares his one true sentence from To Have and Have Not.Join us for our favorite Hemingway parlor game as this excellent novelist chooses his favorite sentence from everything Hemingway ever wrote. We discuss writing about addiction and recovery, Hemingway’s use of dialogue, the way The Sun Also Rises serves as a textbook guide for writing novels, and much more.Don’t forget to submit your nomination for One True Book Club 2026! Submit your choice for a book that is not by Hemingway but is Hemingway-relevant to [email protected] you for your continued support of One True Podcast!