Isaac D'Israeli
104 episodes listed below
Antiquarian essays with a skeptical edge.
Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 2 presents antiquarian essays as measured readings rather than chat or interview. Its subjects range from Italian academies and Reformation psalm singing to political rumors, manuscripts, and the strange accidents that bend history.
PRESS PLAY
Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 2 belongs to the older essay tradition, where a small literary oddity is rarely allowed to remain small. The format is essentially a public-domain reading, paced for attention rather than haste. Its center of gravity is European intellectual history. The show moves through academies, manuscripts, hymns, politics, education, theology, and literary fashion with the confidence of a writer who assumes that cultural habits have long shadows. One episode considers why grave Italian scholars and dignitaries would gather under ridiculous academic titles. The answer becomes a question about secrecy, state suspicion, ecclesiastical Rome, and the camouflage of learned societies. Another episode turns psalm singing into a history of Reformation feeling, metrical verse, public devotion, and religious taste gone sour. The tone can be severe. It can also be dryly amused by vanity, fashion, and the scholar's capacity for theatrical self-importance. Medicine and Morals brings the body into the court of conduct, treating passion, drunkenness, and mental disorder through older theories of physical cure. Anecdotes of the Fairfax Family shifts the concern toward education and natural aptitude, asking whether a poorly chosen profession can bury a mind's proper faculty. The show is especially attentive to documentary loss. Suppressed histories, mutilated memoirs, vanished manuscripts, and forbidden passages become moral evidence, not archival trivia. False Political Reports is a study in useful deception, tracing rumor as a tool of governments, parties, armies, and news writers. Of a History of Events Which Have Not Happened gives the series one of its most characteristic gestures: pausing over roads history almost took. The essays do not hurry toward modern relevance. They let examples accumulate until the old quarrels begin to look familiar. Listeners should expect ornate prose, untranslated or lightly framed references, and occasional transcript contamination from inserted advertisements. The reward is a dense, skeptical, oddly bracing tour of literature as a record of human judgment, credulity, pride, and accident.
Made for: For listeners who enjoy formal literary history, European intellectual culture, Reformation-era disputes, manuscript lore, and the politics of rumor. It suits patient ears more than casual background listening.
What sets it apart: Rather than offering modern host banter, the show preserves the sustained pressure of old essay prose. Its distinct pleasure is watching obscure curiosities widen into arguments about institutions, belief, censorship, and historical contingency.
Dive into the fascinating world of literature with the second volume of Isaac DIsraelis Curiosities of Literature. Building on the insights of volume one, DIsraeli invites listeners on an engaging journey through a tapestry of literary wonders, interlaced with intriguing historical and political insights. With a diverse array of topics, this collection promises to enlighten and entertain, ensuring that there’s something new for every curious mind. Join Carolin as she narrates these captivating tales that celebrate the richness of literature.
Based on 5 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Spoken essays connect literary curiosities with censorship, religious practice, political power, and the accidents that shape the historical record.
Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 2 turns Isaac Disraeli's essays into a sequence of spoken investigations, with each reading following an archival oddity until it opens onto a larger question.
A suppressed life of Erasmus gives you a reason to distrust a tidy history book.
Press play if you want
Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A dry, faintly amused look at learned vanity, odd naming, and the suspicion these academies drew.
Isaac Disraeli turns a small oddity into a wider question: why Italian academies picked grand, sometimes absurd names, and what that says about learned societies, wit, and self-mockery.
A dry history of psalm singing that turns church music into a story of zeal, taste, and public performance.
The essay treats psalm singing as a hinge in religious history, and that move gives it real reach. From the Reformation onward, it folds in later disorders around hymns, Sternhold and Hopkins, and the uneasy business of making devotion public.
An antique argument for treating passion and madness as bodily problems.
This episode treats medicine and morals as one old argument, and that gives it real reach. Plato's claim that virtue cannot simply be taught, constitutional moral disorders, drunkenness, passion, and the idea of easing mental trouble by treating the body are all set in the same…
When history is edited, the damage starts before the book reaches print.
The piece tracks a familiar failure: manuscripts get suppressed, passages get cut, and later readers inherit fragments instead of whole records.
A skeptical look at providence and the history that might have gone differently.
The section starts by pushing back on the habit of reading providence as proof that one side was meant to win. From there, it turns to Spain, Europe, and the Reformation, using a few sharp turns of history to show how close things can come to going another way.
Quiet adventures in the British countryside.
Movie history with a widening lens.
California, explained through consequential conversations.
Spiritual conversations for the present moment.
Italian academies gave themselves ridiculous names.
Psalm singing opens as a chapter in Reformation history.
Morals here walk into medicine.
This episode explores whether individuals have inherent aptitudes for specific professions and how education systems often fail to develop these innate talents.
This episode features advertisements for financial recovery services, healthcare rebranding, and mattress sales, with a title suggesting a focus on parodies.
Manuscripts vanish.
Section 69 opens with a provocation.
This episode explores the history of usurers in the 17th century, focusing on the lawyer Audley and the Court of Wards as examples of financial and legal practices of the era.
This episode discusses the often-overlooked historical figures who introduced exotic flowers, fruits, and plants to Europe, highlighting their contributions to horticulture and the challenges they faced.
This episode explores how songs and music have historically been used to uplift workers and artisans, drawing from ancient Greek traditions and literary references to illustrate their role in public happiness and national character.
This episode explores the concept of pantomimical characters in literature, discussing how even serious minds can appreciate lighthearted and comedic elements, as illustrated by references to Cervantes and other literary works.
This episode explores the historical curiosity of extemporal comedies, where actors performed improvised plays based on skeletal plots called scenarios without rehearsal.