One True Podcast

One True Podcast reunites with the Dean of the Hemingway Short Story, the great Don Daiker! What better way to usher in the autumn than to discuss “The Three-Day Blow,” Hemingway’s curious story from In Our Time? It is a simple tale of a couple of kids getting drunk, talking baseball and literature, but there is simmering Hemingwayesque tension beneath the surface. Don guides us through all the elements of this story, including Bill’s function as a character, the absent presence o...

In this episode, we welcome Lesley Blume back to One True Podcast to mark the 10th anniversary of her acclaimed narrative nonfiction book Everybody Behaves Badly, which chronicles the real-life story behind Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises. The conversation spans Blume's research process, Hemingway's charisma, the role of F. Scott Fitzgerald in brokering Hemingway's career, the mythological dimensions of Lady Brett Ashley, and the iconic photo on the cover of Blume's book. Throughout this wide-...

Welcome to another installment of One True Podcast! A wonderful scholar, raconteur, and true devotee to the ritual of bullfighting, Larry Belcher guides us through the ways Hemingway presents bullfighting in The Sun Also Rises. We explore what bullfighting meant to Hemingway, to Jake Barnes, and its function in the novel. Larry provides historical and cultural context to this controversial and foreign aspect of The Sun Also Rises. Join us as we learn from Larry’s years of bullfighting fandom,...

Virginia Evans, the 2026 PEN/Hemingway Award winner for her novel The Correspondent, joins us to discuss her one true sentence from Hemingway: “You must be prepared to work always without applause." In this episode, Evans reflects on learning to value the work itself before and after publication, especially following the unexpected success of her novel. She discusses writing intuitively, the challenges of shifting between multiple letter-writers’ voices, and braiding many plot strands t...

Join us for the final installment of One True Book Club ’26! In this series of episodes, we are reading the Hemingway-relevant selection, Under Fire by Henri Barbusse, the classic French WWI novel published in 1916. This episode covers the final chapters of the novel. We discuss how Barbusse balances graphic, grotesque depictions of the dead with artistic restraint; we analyze anti-war themes throughout this section, including Corporal Bertrand's powerful speech; and we reflect on the "ray of...