Scott Yarbrough and Guest Hosts
65 episodes listed below
Serious McCarthy criticism, spoken aloud.
Reading McCarthy brings Scott Yarbrough together with McCarthy readers, scholars, and other experts for measured, spoiler-heavy criticism of the author's work. Episodes move between works, screenplays, film performance, archival research, and tributes to figures in McCarthy studies.
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Reading McCarthy is a close-reading room for Cormac McCarthy's works, screenplays, adaptations, and critical legacy. Scott Yarbrough hosts with patience and a reader's appetite for dark terrain. The show is not casual recap. It is conversation shaped by essays, archives, journals, society work, and years of rereading. Guests such as Stacey Peebles and Diane Luce bring film studies, war literature, archival research, and McCarthy Society history into the same frame. That range matters. One episode can examine The Gardener's Son through performance and screenwriting, while another follows Suttree through Tennessee-period research, imagery, and the pull of visual art. The Counselor gets panel treatment, with the question of redemption left open enough for argument. McCarthy's screen life receives especially careful attention. Casting, narrative economy, first-person narration, and the difference between page and film all become part of the criticism. The show also pauses for literary memory, as in the tribute to Rick Wallach. That episode presents McCarthy studies as a community of collaborators, friends, mentors, and readers changed by difficult books. Blood Meridian appears not as a trophy of grimness but as a work that confronts heroic cowboy myth, genocide, cruelty, and language at once. The conversations are learned. They are also plain enough for serious non-specialists who want help entering the scholarship without pretending the work is simple. Spoilers are expected and openly flagged. The vocabulary can be academic, but the rhythm remains that of people thinking aloud across texts they have lived with for years. McCarthy's prose is treated as gorgeous, morally severe, and structurally demanding. His adaptations are treated as separate acts of interpretation rather than mere illustrations. Reading McCarthy is best for listeners who like criticism with footnotes in its bloodstream and conversation in its voice. It gives the McCarthy reader a durable map: books, films, archives, scholars, arguments, and the long shadow of the work.
Made for: For readers of Cormac McCarthy who want informed criticism, scholarly context, and patient discussion of the works and adaptations. It also suits literature students and serious general readers comfortable with spoilers.
What sets it apart: The show pairs accessible conversation with guests who have shaped McCarthy studies through journals, books, archival work, and the Cormac McCarthy Society. It treats works, screenplays, film performances, and the scholarly community as one connected field.
READING MCCARTHY is a podcast devoted to the consideration and discussion of the works of one of our greatest American writers, Cormac McCarthy. Each episode will call upon different well-known Cormackian readers and scholars to help us explore different works and various essential aspects of McCarthy’s writing. (Note these episodes try to offer accessible literary criticism and may contain spoilers from different McCarthy works.)
Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A memorial that turns McCarthy scholarship into vivid, personal remembrance.
This episode treats Reading McCarthy as a memorial to Rick Wallach, a founder of the Cormac McCarthy Society and a frequent guest whose work ranged from the casebook series to essay collections and In Search of Godzilla, Myths, Stagecraft, and Politics.
A focused look at McCarthy's screen work, anchored by Stacey Peebles's McCarthy expertise.
Reading McCarthy shifts into his screen work with Stacey Peebles, and her film background plus long scholarship on McCarthy make her an easy guide to trust.
Great books, taken chapter by chapter, with delight
Warm matchmaking for thoughtful readers.
Christie clues, craft, context, and community.
Literary history with evidence, wit, and range.
Difficult books, strange histories, patient thought.
A tribute episode honoring the late Rick Wallach, a prominent Cormac McCarthy scholar, with a biography and reflections on his contributions.
This episode features a panel discussion with literary scholars analyzing Cormac McCarthy's film script 'The Counselor' and exploring its themes and reception.
Stacey Peebles and Scott Yarbrough focus on Cormac McCarthy's screenplays, especially the unproduced work that later fed back into his novels.
Reading McCarthy host Scott Yarbrough and scholar Nick Monk examine The Stonemason, a play about a multigenerational Black family in Louisville beginning in February 1971.
Scott Yarbrough interviews Brent Kline, an English professor whose dissertation examined mental disability in modern novels, about disability in Cormac McCarthy’s fiction.
Scott Yarbrough and Brian Vescio examine Cormac McCarthy's Cities of the Plain, set in 1952 across Texas, Ciudad Juarez, and New Mexico.
Host Scott Yarbrough and guest Diane Luce discuss Cormac McCarthy's novel Sutree, exploring its themes and place in his oeuvre.
This episode features an interview with scholar Stacey Peebles, exploring her research on Cormac McCarthy's works, war literature, and film studies.