Ever wonder what Shakespeare’s plays actually sounded like 400 years ago? David Crystal is a linguist and author who has researched Original Pronunciation, or OP, the accent with which actors in Shakespeare’s day would have spoken their lines. And Daniel Fromson tells the modern-day story of a man who set sail for Tangier Island on which it’s rumored OP still exists. Plus: Getting the accent right is not the only challenge in reading Elizabethan English. Paul D’Andrea has spent years trying to pull the big ideas out of Shakespeare’s plays. D’Andrea was named Outstanding Faculty of 2015 by the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia.

Later in the show: With seven unpublished novels wasting away on his hard drive, Tony Vanderwarker was astonished when world-renowned author John Grisham offered to take him under his wing and mentor Tony on the art of thriller writing. Plus: Novelist Carrie Brown draws inspiration from her years as a small-town America journalist, and from the mysteries of the cosmos. Her new book The Stargazer’s Sister tells the story of two remarkable sibling astronomers whose work led to the discovery of the planet Uranus.