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About Zachary Davis

Zachary Davis is the host of Ministry of Ideas and Writ Large and the Editor-in-Chief of Radiant.

NBN Episodes hosted by Zachary:

Shakespeare For All September 18, 2023

Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night" Part 3: The Language

A Discussion with Emma Smith

Emma Smith

Hosted by Zachary Davis
Listen:
In Part 3, Professor Emma Smith offers close-readings of some of the play’s most important scenes, which dramatize the wide range of relationships and types of love explored in the …
Shakespeare For All September 11, 2023

Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night" Part 2: Characters and Questions

A Discussion with Emma Smith

Emma Smith

Hosted by Zachary Davis
Listen:
Part 2 looks at the many instances of inversion and transgression, looking at how characters cross boundaries of gender, status, and social role, and how they are punished or rewarded …
Shakespeare For All September 4, 2023

Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night" Part 1: The Story

A Discussion with Emma Smith

Emma Smith

Hosted by Zachary Davis
Twelfth Night, named for the celebration that is both the culmination and the close of the Christmas festivities, is a bittersweet romantic comedy at once melancholy and merry. Through its …
Shakespeare For All August 28, 2023

Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice" Part 3: The Language

A Discussion with Stephen Greenblatt

Stephen Greenblatt

Hosted by Zachary Davis
Listen:
In Part 3, Professor Stephen Greenblatt offers close-readings of some of the play’s most significant scenes. You’ll get an in-depth look at the powerful relationship between Antonio and Bassanio, the …
Shakespeare For All August 21, 2023

Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice" Part 2: Characters and Questions

A Discussion with Stephen Greenblatt

Stephen Greenblatt

Hosted by Zachary Davis
Listen:
Part 2 discusses the play’s central characters, their profound bonds of intimacy and animosity, and the effect of money on those bonds. Professor Stephen Greenblatt explores the way that Shylock …
Shakespeare For All August 14, 2023

Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice" Part 1: The Story

A Discussion with Stephen Greenblatt

Stephen Greenblatt

Hosted by Zachary Davis
Listen:
The Merchant of Venice is one of Shakespeare’s most gripping and challenging plays. Labeled as a comedy in Shakespeare’s First Folio, today it resonates as tragedy as well, thanks to …
Shakespeare For All August 7, 2023

Shakespeare's "King Lear" Part 3: The Language

A Discussion with Simon Palfrey

Simon Palfrey

Hosted by Zachary Davis
Listen:
In Part 3, Professor Palfrey offers close-readings of some of the play’s most significant scenes. You’ll witness the king and the beggar in the heart of a storm; the naked …
Shakespeare For All July 31, 2023

Shakespeare's "King Lear" Part 2: Characters and Questions

A Discussion with Simon Palfrey

Simon Palfrey

Hosted by Zachary Davis
Listen:
Part 2 explores the way that Shakespeare revised the original Lear story and the way he revised his own play to create a uniquely wrenching form of tragedy. Professor Simon …
Shakespeare For All July 24, 2023

Shakespeare's "King Lear" Part 1: The Story

A Discussion with Simon Palfrey

Simon Palfrey

Hosted by Zachary Davis
Listen:
King Lear has perhaps the most expansive cosmic scope of any of Shakespeare’s tragedies. In this play, Shakespeare retells the story of an aging king from Britain’s ancient past who …
Shakespeare For All July 17, 2023

Shakespeare's "Henry V" Part 3: The Language

A Discussion with Stephen Foley

Stephen Foley

Hosted by Zachary Davis
Listen:
Part 3 features close-readings of some of the play’s most significant speeches, with Professor Stephen Foley. Through Henry’s private soliloquy, we trace his moments of insight and blindness. In the …
Shakespeare For All July 10, 2023

Shakespeare's "Henry V" Part 2: Characters and Questions

A Discussion with Stephen Foley

Stephen Foley

Hosted by Zachary Davis
Listen:
Part 2 opens with a discussion of the history play genre and of how history shapes and constrains the plays’ protagonists. With Professor Stephen Foley, we then explore the complex …
Shakespeare For All July 3, 2023

Shakespeare's "Henry V" Part 1: The Story

A Discussion with Stephen Foley

Stephen Foley

Hosted by Zachary Davis
Listen:
Henry V is one of the most celebrated of Shakespeare’s history plays. In the 1590s, Shakespeare wrote a series of eight plays based on English chronicle history, telling the stories …
Shakespeare For All July 3, 2023

Shakespeare's "Henry V" Part 1: The Story

A Discussion with Stephen Foley

Stephen Foley

Hosted by Zachary Davis
Listen:
Henry V is one of the most celebrated of Shakespeare’s history plays. In the 1590s, Shakespeare wrote a series of eight plays based on English chronicle history, telling the stories …
Shakespeare For All June 26, 2023

Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" Part 3: The Language

A Discussion with Tiffany Stern

Tiffany Stern

Hosted by Zachary Davis
Listen:
In Part 3, Professor Tiffany Stern offers close-readings of some of the play’s most significant speeches. You’ll discover the surprising biblical resonances in a speech by the foolish Bottom and …
Ministry of Ideas June 22, 2023

Rituals for a Dying World

Illuminations Episode 9

Jennie Rosenn, Andrue Kahn, and Malkah Binah Klein

Hosted by Zachary Davis
Absorbing the full reality of climate change will require more than a scientific approach. Some American Jews are showing how religious ritual can help us metabolize catastrophic grief while also …
Shakespeare For All June 19, 2023

Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" Part 2: Context and Questions

A Discussion with Tiffany Stern

Tiffany Stern

Hosted by Zachary Davis
Listen:
Part 2 addresses the play's central questions about comedy, tragedy, and passion by examining its language and plot motifs. Professor Tiffany Stern will guide you through the play’s sometimes dark …
Shakespeare For All June 12, 2023

Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" Part 1: The Story

A Discussion with Tiffany Stern

Tiffany Stern

Hosted by Zachary Davis
Listen:
A Midsummer Night’s Dream is one of Shakespeare’s most popular romantic comedies. At the same time, it’s a play that explores the darker and more dangerous side of love. Four …
Shakespeare For All June 5, 2023

Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar" Part 3: The Language

A Discussion with Michael Dobson

Michael Dobson

Hosted by Zachary Davis
Listen:
In Part 3, Professor Michael Dobson offers close-readings of some of the play’s most important speeches, including Brutus’s deliberation over Caesar’s assassination and the rival speeches given by Brutus and …
Shakespeare For All May 29, 2023

Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar" Part 2: Characters and Questions

A Discussion with Michael Dobson

Michael Dobson

Hosted by Zachary Davis
Part 2 focuses on the play’s key interpretive questions: how we are invited to judge the central characters. Is Caesar, in Shakespeare’s story, really a tyrant who needed to be …
Shakespeare For All May 22, 2023

Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar" Part 1: The Story

A Discussion with Michael Dobson

Michael Dobson

Hosted by Zachary Davis
Julius Caesar is one of Shakespeare’s most famous plays, telling the story of one of history’s most famous events. In this tense political thriller, the Roman senator Brutus must decide …
Shakespeare For All May 15, 2023

Shakespeare's "Othello" Part 3: The Language

A Discussion with Farah Karim-Cooper

Farah Karim-Cooper

Hosted by Zachary Davis
In Part 3, Professor Farah Karim-Cooper offers close-readings of some of the play’s most significant scenes. You’ll also hear a special commentary on Othello by actor Keith Hamilton Cobb, author …
Shakespeare For All May 8, 2023

Shakespeare's "Othello" Part 2: Characters and Questions

A Discussion with Farah Karim-Cooper

Farah Karim-Cooper

Hosted by Zachary Davis
Part 2 delves into the characters’ psychologies and how character is created by speech — how Othello’s language reflects his changing sense of self and how Iago carries out his …
Shakespeare For All May 1, 2023

Shakespeare's "Othello" Part 1: The Story

A Discussion with Farah Karim-Cooper

Farah Karim-Cooper

Hosted by Zachary Davis
William Shakespeare’s Othello is the only one of his tragedies to feature a black male protagonist. Othello is a black general who elopes with a white noblewoman called Desdemona — …
Shakespeare For All April 24, 2023

Shakespeare's "As You Like It" Part 3: the Language

A Discussion with Will Tosh

Will Tosh

Hosted by Zachary Davis
As You Like It is one of Shakespeare’s most beloved romantic comedies. It is also his most daring exploration of sex, gender, and identity. In the Forest of Arden, Rosalind …