Where Game of Thrones Begins (April 9, 2016)

As the premiere of Game of Thrones approaches, we trace the medieval

roots of the hit TV show with Larissa Tracy. She discusses the influence of Tolkien and medieval literature on the popular program.

And: 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, Imtiaz Habib and Maya Mathur explore what Shakespeare’s plays can reveal about life today. Plus: It’s hard to find a nuanced black character written by 19th century white authors. But Gretchen Martin says she’s found trickster characters (think Br’er Rabbit) in some 19th century classics.

Later in the show: During the 1910s and 1920s, the question of whether one was “highbrow” or “lowbrow” became a concern in the minds of modernist Americans. Brooks Hefner 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. And: When Christopher McGee 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