Everyday Shakespeare

About Everyday Shakespeare

Hosts Caroline Bicks and Michelle Ephraim are Shakespeare professors and close friends who love to bond over the ways Shakespeare's plays help them through their everyday dramas. In each episode, they go back to Shakespeare's day to bring you some funny, fresh insights into a pressing modern problem. They'll explore popular Renaissance writings – from parenting books to cosmetics manuals – and, of course, plays – and talk about their uncanny connections to our everyday struggles. Whether you're dealing with an aging libido, a pandemic, or a dysfunctional family gathering, you'll feel a little bit better when Bard meets life. Caroline is the Stephen E. King Chair in Literature at the University of Maine, and Michelle is Professor of English at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. They've shared their unique brand of Bard-meets-life humor everywhere from the New York Times and the Moth Radio Hour to McSweeney's Internet Tendency, and are the co-authors of Shakespeare, Not Stirred: Cocktails for Your Everyday Dramas. Who says an English major is useless? "The Everyday Shakespeare Podcast" is produced by Jill Ruby.

Publisher

Caroline Bicks & Michelle Ephraim

Category

arts · comedy

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

9 Apr 2023

Latest episode

19 Jun 2026

Latest episodes

1 of 31 episodes have a transcript.

1. 

   19 Jun 2026TRANSCRIPT

   A cruise by any other name would suck as much

   Host [Host Name] explores Shakespeare's fascination with sea voyages and maritime disasters, revealing timeless insights into the pleasures and perils of cruises.

2. 

   9 Jan 2026

   Shakespeare in Purgatory

   Shakespeare's great tragedy Hamlet is having a moment. Between director Chloe Zhao's film adaptation of Maggie O'Farrell's bestselling novel, Hamnet, and Taylor Swift's song "The Fate of Ophelia," two of Shakespeare's most tragic characters have hit pop culture payday. In this episode, we explore these creative iterations of Shakespeare's life and work, and why Hamlet and Ophelia continue to resonate. We talk about the concept of Catholic Purgatory, and how Zhao's film captures the emotional power of this in-between spiritual space — one that haunts Shakespeare's original play and (as we discuss) his original audiences. In the second half of the episode, we give Ophelia extra time in the spotlight as we mine the Victorian origin stories that solidified her reputation as nothing more than a beautiful, hysterical girl who drowns herself; and then we turn to the play itself, where she's alive and fully sane most of the time, and listen to what she's really saying.

3. 

   15 Sept 2025

   Power Couples from Instagram to Alexandria

   It's human nature to love the spectacle of a power couple, whether it's a celebrity marriage proposal or corporate heavyweights having some adulterous fun at a Coldplay concert. But how did people get their fix before social media, kiss-cams, and People Magazine? In this episode, we explore Shakespeare's juiciest stories of famous men and women--including Henry VIII, his multiple wives, and G.O.A.T power couple Antony and Cleopatra—as well as the fans who gobbled up all their faults and follies.

Inside a recent episode

A cruise by any other name would suck as much

Published 19 Jun 2026 · Transcript excerpt

[…] We're going to finish this episode off by talking about a truly fabulous fantasy cruise ship adventure written by the 17th century English woman, Margaret Cavendish. And we've given her a shout out in a previous episode on the topic of memoirs. Right. This lady is amazing. She tried every literary genre under the sun. Yeah, and non-literary ones. Yeah, that's right. Anyway, she was writing poems, philosophical treatises. She wrote her autobiography. I mean, it's crazy. Yeah, and in 1666, she published something called The Blazing World, which is considered to be the first piece of science fiction prose ever written. […]

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

24 ratings

Spotify

5.0 / 5

7 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 55 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

76

Social presence

0

YouTube

0

Engagement

85

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Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.

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