The Project Narrative podcast is built on the idea that storytelling is one of humanity’s greatest inventions, a way in which we both seek to understand the world and to change it. The podcast features scholars of narrative in conversation about short narratives that engage in that work of knowing and intervening. In each episode, a scholar reads a narrative aloud and then discusses it with the host of the podcast, Jim Phelan, the director of Project Narrative. The conversations range across a wide array of topics: the guest’s reasons for selecting it; the sources of its appeal, including the pleasures it offers and the challenges it presents; the claims it makes about understanding some part of the world and about doing something as a result.
Episode 59: Jim Phelan & Howard Sklar — Bernard Malamud’s “Idiots First”
In this episode of the Project Narrative Podcast, Jim Phelan and Howard Sklar discuss Bernard Malamud’s “Idiots First,” which was published in Malamud’s 1963 collection with the same title. Howard Sklar is a senior university lecturer in the Department of Languages at the University of Helsinki, where he also has the title of docent– equivalent to associate professor in the United States– in English philology. In addition, Howard holds the title of docent in literary studies with a special emphasis in Narrative Theory at Tampere University in Finland. Howard is the author of The Art of Sympathy in Fiction: Forms of Ethical and Emotional Persuasion, published in 2013, and the author of numerous essays on subjects ranging from affective responses to narratives, to narrative ethics, from Jewish-American literature, to representations of intellectual disability.
26 Aug 2026
Episode 58: Jim Phelan & Wai Chee Dimock — Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”
In this episode of the Project Narrative Podcast, Jim Phelan and Wai Chee Dimock discuss Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery,” a story first published in The New Yorker in 1948. Wai Chee Dimock is William Lamson Professor Emerita of English and American Studies at Yale University. She has written influentially about climate change, public health, and indigenous communities, and in much of her work, she has called attention to the interrelations between humans and non-humans. Dimock’s books include Through Other Continents: American Literature Across Deep Time from 2006, Shades of the Planet, and Weak Planet. Her 1996 book Residues of Justice: Literature, Law, Philosophy was reissued in 2021. Dimock recently completed another book, Microbes and Machines: Repairing a Damaged Planet with Nonhuman Actors. From 2016 to 2021, Dimock served as editor of PMLA, and, in her retirement, she’s writing a Substack newsletter, Dog Stories, which features discussions of dogs in life and literature.
15 Jul 2026
Episode 57: Jim Phelan & Gerald Prince — Guy de Maupassant’s “The Necklace” (“La Parure”)
In this episode of the Project Narrative Podcast, Jim Phelan and Gerald Prince discuss Guy de Maupassant’s 1884 story, “La Parure,” or “The Necklace” in English. Prince reads the 1924 translation by Ernest Boyd. Gerald Prince is professor of French and Francophone studies in the Department of Francophone, Italian, and Germanic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Prince is one of the preeminent scholars of his generation in the fields of narratology and of 20th and 21st century French literature. Prince’s books include Métaphysique et technique dans l’oeuvre romanesque de Sartre, A Grammar of Stories, Narratology: The Form and Functioning of Narrative, A Dictionary of Narratology, Narrative as Theme, Guide du Roman de Langue Française (1901-1950), and Guide du Roman de Langue Française (1951-2000). In 2013, Prince received the Wayne C. Booth Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Society for the Study of Narrative.
Who has been a guest on Project Narrative
Names identified in recent episode analyses. Showing up to five guests.
Jim Phelan
Kelly Marsh
Stefan Iversen
Lemony Snicket
Reach and audience
Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.
Apple Podcasts (US)
5.0 / 5
12 ratings
Spotify
5.0 / 5
1 ratings
Podcast Authority Score: 34 / 100
A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.
Quality
35
Social presence
0
YouTube
0
Engagement
82
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