Here’s a list of the works we’ll be looking at in the first 12 months of the show! The current list takes us from c. 2100 BCE to about 400 BCE.
Episodes publish every other Thursday. Unless noted, each work gets two episodes: a summary of the main plot or ideas, and then a meta episode that looks at the backstory of the work, an aspect of its origin culture, or its legacy.
Want to see the 2025-2026 reading list? Click here.
- February/March 2024: The Epic of Gilgamesh (Author Unknown, Sumer, c. 2100 BCE)
- March/April 2024: The Tale of Sinhue (Author Unknown, Egypt, c. 1800 BCE)
- April/May 2024: The Book of Going Forth by Day (a/k/a “The Egyptian Book of the Dead”, Egypt, c. 1500 BCE)
- May/June 2024: The Rig Veda (Author Unknown, India, c. 1000 BCE)
- June/July 2024: The Iliad (Homer, Greece, c. 800 BCE)
- July/August 2024: The Odyssey (Homer, Greece, c. 800 BCE)
- August 2024: Genesis and Exodus (Author Unknown, Israel, c. 800-200 BCE)
- September 2024: Theogony and Works and Days (Hesiod, Greece, 700 BCE)
- October 2024: The Upanishads (Author Unknown, India, c. 800-600 BCE)
- Early November 2024: Ode to Aphrodite (Sappho, Greece, c. 600 BCE – one episode only)
- November/December 2024: The Analects (Confucius, China, c. 550 BCE)
- December/January 2025: Aesop’s Fables (Greece, c. 550 BCE)
- January/February 2025: The Book of Isaiah (Israel, c. 730 – 515 BCE)
- February/March 2025: The Oresteia (Aeschylus, Greece, 458 BCE)
Scripts/transcripts for each show will be published the day they air. Once each show airs, we’ll link the title of each work to its related tag so you can read all the posts about it.
If you love one of the works on the list and know a fun fact about the history of it, an interesting adaptation you’d like to share, or know a historical figure who was weirdly obsessed with it, etc., please comment below. We’d love to give you credit in an upcoming show!
You can also listen now! Just click below to get started:
Books Of All Time 