The most played episodes among Podcast App listeners.

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   Number 1: Shakespeare and the Law, with Len Niehoff

   If you were Hamlet’s lawyer, would you advise he plead not guilty by reason of insanity? Would you consider his accidental slaying of Polonius to be murder or manslaughter? These are the kinds of questions that University of Michigan Law professor Len Niehoff asks his students to consider. But why is it so important for lawyers to brush up their Shakespeare? According to Niehoff, Shakespeare and lawyers both think about everything. Some of his plays illustrate the consequences of a lawless society. Others show how people respond to the miscarriage of justice or being excluded from the legal protection of human rights. And some others, like the case of Hamlet, can help students practice thinking like lawyers. Niehoff’s book, Meeting Shakespeare at the Bar: Reading the Bard Through the Lens of the Law grew out of those classroom discussions. In this episode, Niehoff discusses his book, how his teaching practices have evolved, and what Shakespeare can teach lawyers about looking at problems from every possible angle. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published August 25, 2026. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This episode was produced by Matt Frassica. Garland Scott is the executive producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Technical support was provided by Daniel Wanschura in Michigan and Voice Trax West in Studio City, California. Web production was handled by Megan Fraedrich. Transcripts are edited by Leonor Fernandez. Final mixing services provided by Clean Cuts at Three Seas, Inc.

   August 25, 2026·37min
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   Number 2: Stratford Festival's Antoni Cimolino

   Near the end of The Tempest, Prospero vows to retire from practicing the “rough magic” he has mastered, to break his magical staff and drown his spellbooks. After 14 seasons as Artistic Director of Canada's Stratford Festival, Antoni Cimolino has chosen to direct The Tempest as part of his final season before he, too, enters retirement. As possibly the final play Shakespeare wrote alone, The Tempest has often represented a goodbye, or at least a sea change. For Cimolino, who started his career in Stratford nearly 40 years ago, it’s a big change indeed. The documentary This Above All, premiering later this month, follows his tenure leading North America’s largest classical repertory company through a historic expansion, a pandemic, and dozens of powerful productions. In this episode, Cimolino discusses revisiting a play, the power of forgiveness, the show that sparked his love for theater, the surprising role toaster ovens played in his early career, and the “rough magic” that makes theater possible.

   August 11, 2026·34min
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   Number 3: The Bard in the Borderlands

   In 1597, the first published edition of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet rolled off the printing press. Only a year later, the Spanish colony of Santa Fe was established. While you might not immediately think Shakespeare had much to do with the Latinx experience, Shakespeare’s career and the Spanish conquest of the Americas fit into a similar timeline. The Bard in the Borderlands, a three-volume anthology of plays by Chicanx and Indigenous playwrights, explores the possibilities of retelling Shakespeare through the culture, language, and traditions of “la frontera,” or “the borderlands.” Simply defined by co-editor Katherine Gillen as “land that was once Mexico, but… became part of the United States” after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, there is very little “simple” about the history of this region. Its complex blend of identities and experiences are expressed in fantastic transformations of Shakespeare’s work, from a re-imagining of The Tempest set in a Houston school gymnasium to Macbeth's Weird Sisters practicing brujería. In this episode, editors Kathryn Vomero Santos and Katherine Gillen and contributing playwright Andrew Siañez-De La O discuss how these works speak to Mexican American and Indigenous traditions—and what it means to create “a stranger Shakespeare.” From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published September 8, 2026. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This episode was produced by Matt Frassica. Garland Scott is the executive producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Technical support was provided by Harter Music in San Antonio, Gideon Brower in Baltimore, and Voice Trax West in Studio City, California. Web production was handled by Megan Fraedrich. Transcripts are edited by Leonor Fernandez. Production support was provided by Steven Jackson. Final mixing services provided by Clean Cuts at Three Seas, In

   September 08, 2026·34min
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   Number 4: The Complete Life of William Shakespeare, with Paul Menzer

   How do you write a “complete” life of Shakespeare when very little complete information about his life exists? Four centuries after Shakespeare’s death, the legends that have grown up around him have taken on a cultural significance of their own. As Inaugural Folger Chair in Shakespeare Studies Paul Menzer puts it, “the verifiable facts of his life would fit on the back of a postcard. But the stories that we have told about them would fill a dozen phone books.” Menzer’s book, The Complete Life of William Shakespeare, dives into the life story of one of history’s most editorialized yet most enigmatic figures, navigating the space between fact and fancy. Did Shakespeare embark on a lone hero’s journey, or was his move to London more of a family road trip? Could such a great poet have also been a shrewd businessman? And why aren’t there more Shakespeares out there? In this episode, Menzer lays out the known facts of the Bard’s biography and posits how we might connect the dots on what’s missing—while throwing some “wobbles into the orbit” of well-trenched folk wisdom. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published September 22, 2026. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This episode was produced by Matt Frassica. Garland Scott is the executive producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Technical support was provided by Voice Trax West in Studio City, California. Web production was handled by Megan Fraedrich. Transcripts are edited by Leonor Fernandez. Final mixing services provided by Clean Cuts at Three Seas, Inc.

   September 22, 2026·36min
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   Number 5: Shakespeare and Stephen King, with Caroline Bicks

   Imagine being able to dig through Shakespeare’s manuscripts and ask him about his writing process. Did King Lear survive in the first draft? What if Hamlet originally said, “To live or not to live?” While we can only dream about that opportunity, scholar and Everyday Shakespeare host Caroline Bicks experienced something close to it when she gained unprecedented access to the archives of another famous author: Stephen King. The Bard of Avon and the King of Horror have more in common than you might think. Both are popular and prolific authors who have been praised and derided for writing for the masses. But both also pay close attention to the sounds of words, the flow of names, and the rhythms of sentences. And sometimes, King’s work even takes inspiration from Shakespeare himself. In this episode, Bicks draws fascinating parallels between Shakespeare and King and shares how she became the first scholar permitted to explore King’s personal papers. Her book, Monsters in the Archives: My Year of Fear with Stephen King recounts her chance to live every scholar’s dream—while surrounded by the stuff of nightmares. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published July 28, 2026. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This episode was produced by Matt Frassica. Garland Scott is the executive producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Technical support was provided by Voice Trax West in Studio City, California. Web production was handled by Megan Fraedrich. Transcripts are edited by Leonor Fernandez. Final mixing services provided by Clean Cuts at Three Seas, Inc.

   July 28, 2026·38min
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