Where Game of Thrones Begins

As the premiere of Game of Thrones approaches, we trace the medieval roots of the hit TV show, discussing the influence of Tolkien and medieval literature. Our guest makes predictions about what’s to come in Westeros and Essos.

Can a play written more than 400 years ago have something to say about Muslim-Americans? Some Shakespeare experts think so. In advance of Old Dominion University’s Shakespeare 400 Years After event, we explore what Shakespeare’s plays can reveal about life today.

It’s hard to find a nuanced black character written by 19^th century white authors. But our guest says she’s found trickster characters (think Br’er Rabbit) in some 19^th century classics.

During the 1910s and 1920s, the question of whether one was “highbrow” or “lowbrow” became a concern in the minds of modernist Americans. Our guest says this “brow anxiety” dominated the career of Willard Huntington Wright, who fancied himself an intellectual aristocrat while secretly writing a series of wildly popular detective stories under the pseudonym S.S. Van Dine.

When our guest first discovered the Hardy Boys books as a child, he had no idea the author, Franklin W. Dixon, was fictitious and that the books were written by ghostwriters. McGee, who now teaches children’s mystery, tells the story of this popular series’ creation and changes through the years.