
Insights from recent episode analysis
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Podcast Focus
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Platform Reach
Insights are generated by CastFox AI using publicly available data, episode content, and proprietary models.
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Total monthly reach
Estimated from 1 chart position in 1 market.
By chart position
- 🇳🇿NZ · Books#673K to 10K
- Per-Episode Audience
Est. listeners per new episode within ~30 days
1.5K to 5K🎙 Weekly cadence·33 episodes·Last published 2mo ago - Monthly Reach
Unique listeners across all episodes (30 days)
3K to 10K🇳🇿100% - Active Followers
Loyal subscribers who consistently listen
900 to 3K
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* Data sourced directly from platform APIs and aggregated hourly across all major podcast directories.
On the show
From 10 epsHost
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Recent episodes
Martha Gellhorn: The Face of War
Apr 22, 2026
36m 29s
Linda Gray Sexton: Anne Sexton's 45 Mercy Street
Jan 21, 2026
44m 59s
Seamus Heaney: Death of a Naturalist
May 2, 2025
31m 04s
Carlos Fuentes: From Illusion to Reality
Mar 20, 2025
45m 30s
Ursula Le Guin: Don't Push the River
Jan 30, 2025
44m 25s
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| Date | Episode | Topics | Guests | Brands | Places | Keywords | Sponsor | Length | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4/22/26 | ![]() Martha Gellhorn: The Face of War✨ | war correspondencemilitarism+2 | Martha Gellhorn | — | — | warcorrespondent+2 | — | 36m 29s | |
| 1/21/26 | ![]() Linda Gray Sexton: Anne Sexton's 45 Mercy Street✨ | memoirpoetry+2 | Linda Gray Sexton | 45 Mercy StreetPulitzer Prize+1 | — | Anne SextonSearching for Mercy Street+1 | — | 44m 59s | |
| 5/2/25 | ![]() Seamus Heaney: Death of a Naturalist✨ | poetryperformance+1 | Seamus Heaney | Nobel Prize | Toronto | Nobel PrizeHarbourfront Reading Series+1 | — | 31m 04s | |
| 3/20/25 | ![]() Carlos Fuentes: From Illusion to Reality✨ | Carlos FuentesMexican literature+1 | Carlos Fuentes | From Illusion to Reality | Toronto | literatureToronto+1 | — | 45m 30s | |
| 1/30/25 | ![]() Ursula Le Guin: Don't Push the River✨ | Ursula K. Le GuinSci-fi+2 | Ursula K. Le Guin | CBC Ideas | Toronto | TorontoCBC Ideas+1 | — | 44m 25s | |
| 12/19/24 | ![]() Saul Bellow: Wires not Roots✨ | Saul BellowNobel Prize+3 | Saul BellowAdrienne Clarkson | Nobel | — | American literature1988+1 | — | 49m 18s | |
| 11/20/24 | ![]() Jamaica Kincaid: Brothers, Mothers and Antigua✨ | Jamaica KincaidDionne Brand+3 | Jamaica KincaidDionne Brand | — | Toronto | conversationliterature+2 | — | 53m 56s | |
| 10/16/24 | ![]() Mario Vargas Llosa: Literature Can Help People Live✨ | literaturepolitics+1 | Mario Vargas LlosaAdrienne Clarkson | — | Toronto | Toronto International Festival of Authors1988+1 | — | 49m 03s | |
| 9/18/24 | ![]() Hilary Mantel: Experiments in Love✨ | Hilary MantelWolf Hall Trilogy+2 | Hilary Mantel | Wolf Hall Trilogy | Toronto | literatureauthors+2 | — | 48m 06s | |
| 10/15/20 | ![]() Umberto Eco: The Name of the Rose✨ | Umberto Ecoliterary legacy+2 | — | Penguin Random HouseLa nave di Teseo+3 | ItalyToronto | literaturelegacy+5 | — | 36m 26s | |
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| 9/24/20 | ![]() Austin Clarke: Sometimes, A Motherless Child | Austin Clarke was a writer who was long fascinated by how we are both nurtured by and damaged by the communities that surround us - and most particularly how Caribbean and West Indian communities in mid-20th century Toronto both nurtured and damaged young Black men. In this reading, recorded on stage at the Harbourfront Reading Series in 1991, Clarke reads the final story from his collection, In This City, which presents the lives of Torontonians as they love, fight, explore, fear, intimidate, feel dispossessed, disobey and search for unpredictable moments of grace both within the confines of their communities but also in the cold and sometimes violent communities that lay beyond walls. The title of this story references a well-known Negro Spiritual, Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child, which laments the pain of life from a point of view (the slave) that was almost unheard of in the dominant culture which inspired it. The song later became significant as one of the Civil Rights Movement’s most moving anthems. Clarke’s retelling slyly reverses the roles and instead of a motherless child, a mother laments the loss of her son. And it can’t be ignored here that so many times when we see the way the poor are forced to interact with brutal figures of authority, violence is the response. The more things change, the more they stay the same. The audio for this episode is from In This City by Austin Clarke. Copyright © 1991 by Austin Clarke. Used with the permission of the Estate of Austin Clarke. It is also used with the permission of the Toronto International Writers Festival. | — | ||||||
| 9/10/20 | ![]() Doris Lessing: Homage to the New Man | It’s easy to forget when one sees how ubiquitous the “author reading” has become that there was a time when this custom was practically unheard of. Writers are, after all, often introverted, timid - even misanthropic - and generally tasked with sitting alone in a room, mired in their own thoughts and pulling words out of thin air which they clack down onto screens and then woops no that won’t do...erase that erase erase. Do it again. Writers, at least in our often romantic notion of them, are watchers, not do-ers. They linger in the backgrounds and take notes. They brood. Maybe, though, this very notion is one that is fast becoming anachronistic. For in today’s market-driven go-go-go warp speed world, authors are expected to write a book a year, Tweet witty quips regularly to their tens of thousands of followers, snap brilliant Instagram pics with their lattes and labradors, do the talk show circuit, serve on prize juries, write newspaper columns (“The Death of the Novel”), fly on planes from festival to library to festival and perform their own work on stages to thunderous applause, sign books for hours, listen patiently as readers gush, talk with authority on TV or a podcast episode about the state of this or that or the other- and then innovate, advocate, pontificate. It’s a wonder writers write at all. This long and windy diatribe to simply point out one brief and lovely moment when Doris Lessing announces from the stage that this reading, this moment from a Harbourfront event in Toronto in 1984, is her first reading. Ever. And when you, the listener, realize that Doris Lessing, though far from being at the end of her career (she was already in her mid-60s by this point), for just a moment you get a glimpse into that other former world of the writer as loner, as someone charged with quietly finding the words and writing them out, not broadcasting them to the world. There is a sweetness to imagining her there on that stage, wondering how she got there, blinking into the lights, dry-throated, looking out into that room of eager faces waiting for her to speak, to be more than a mere writer. And it’s that world, that old world where writers wrote quietly in rooms (and drank and scrapped and raged - some things never change) and you can hear hints of that old world in her voice when she reads these two beautiful stories about young girls on the cusp of adulthood. That’s the Doris Lessing we hear as we “look” into that world from before, a world she is about to leave behind, stepping up to that microphone for the first time, clearing her throat and letting go of the past. *** This audio recording of Doris Lessing, recorded on stage at Harbourfront Reading Series in 1984, is used with the kind permission of The Doris Lessing Literary Will Trust as well as the Toronto International Festival of Authors. And, as always, thanks to TIFA, the Toronto International Festival of Authors, for allowing us access to their archives. Find out more at FestivalOfAuthors.ca. | — | ||||||
| 8/27/20 | ![]() Eduardo Galeano: Memory of Fire | Recorded live on stage in Toronto in 1988, Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano - a wholly unique writer that could only have come out of leftist Latin America in the middle part of the 20th century - shows us in this reading from his trilogy, Memory of Fire, snippets of the lives that he spent his entire career spotlighting. Whether he’s showing us stories of the lives of the poor, the downtrodden, the uneducated, mestizos, the descendant of slaves or slaves themselves, Galeano showed how the “big men of history” made their names and carved out countries from the green verdant jungles of the Amazon but always on the backs of others and with consequences that are still present to this day. The audio recording of Eduardo Galeano, recorded on stage at the Harbourfront Reading Series in 1988, is used with the permission of the Estate of Eduardo Galeano c/o Dr. Eduardo de Freitas and Susan Bergholz Literary Services, New York City and Lamy, NM. All rights reserved. The recording is also used by permission of the Toronto International Festival of Authors. Find out more at festivalofauthors.ca. | — | ||||||
| 8/13/20 | ![]() Angela Carter: Nights at the Circus | Salman Rushdie tells a story about a reading he was asked to do for a UK book festival early in his career. On the ticket with Rushdie was another young British writer, Angela Carter who, when taking the stage, looked out into a sparsely attended event and spontaneously invited the entire group of attendees to continue the event across the road at the Pub. That sense of Carter -- inventive, flexible but ever practical -- comes out in this reading, recorded in Toronto in 1986, and demonstrates her powerful voice, complex use of language, and her unique humour and creativity. Her early death at age 51 was a major loss for English-language writing. The audio recording used in this episode from Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter is published by Chatto & Windus, 1984. Copyright © The Estate of Angela Carter. Reproduced by permission of the Estate c/o Rogers, Coleridge & White Ltd., 20 Powis Mews, London W11 1JN. Additionally, the audio is used with permission of the Toronto International Festival of Authors. | — | ||||||
| 7/30/20 | ![]() Luisa Valenzuela: Love of Animals | Recorded at Toronto’s Harbourfront Reading Series in 1979, Argentine author, Luisa Valenzuela recruits Founding Artistic Director of the Harbourfront Reading Series, Greg Gatenby, to be her reading partner in a complex story of two cars as they race through the streets of Buenos Aires. In a style that is like no other writer of her generation or since, Valenzuela portrays the cold determination of the hunter and the rising fear of the hunted. Written at the height of the Dirty War, Valenzuela herself was exiled for a number of years though she made the politics and censorship of her country a central theme in much of her writing from this era. Later in this episode, Valenzuela reads a darkly humorous story about the plethora of shoes which are found on the streets, so many that even beggars of the city are “The Best Shod” destitute people in the world. The secret is simple if horrific: they are the shoes of the Disappeared. This recording was used with the kind permission of the author. This episode content was also made with the permission of the Toronto International Festival of Authors (TIFA). | — | ||||||
| 7/16/20 | ![]() Richard Wagamese: A Quality of Light | This recording, made in Toronto in 1996, was the first public reading Richard Wagamese ever did. Done on the publication of his 2nd novel, A Quality of Light, Wagamese references in his opening comments the struggles he faced as an Indigenous artist in a world often hostile to these voices. From his early life and early displacement as a boy to his early writing career at the Calgary Herald, among other publications, Wagamese's journey eventually led him to become one of Canada’s most popular and beloved Indigenous writers. This reading from his 1997 novel presents a moving and painful story that demonstrates the vital force that friendship and compassion have on the very arc of a life lived. Wagamese’s reading was recorded as part of Toronto’s International Readings at Harbourfront Series (now called TIFA) and is used with the kind permission of the Estate of Richard Wagamese. A Quality of Light was published by Doubleday Canada in 1997. This episode content is also made possible with the permission of Toronto International Festival of Authors. | — | ||||||
| 7/2/20 | ![]() John Irving: A Prayer for Owen Meany | In an early draft of one of Irving’s most beloved novels, A Prayer for Owen Meany, Irving’s reading makes Owen Meany come alive in a way that his reader may never have experienced before. Whether a long-time fan of Irving or Owen Meany or new to the novel, this reading captures why Irving is such an entertaining reader but also such a vital and natural storyteller. Irving’s reading was recorded in 1986 as part of Toronto’s International Readings at Harbourfront Series (now called TIFA) and is used with the kind permission of John Irving and the Turnbull Agency. It’s also made possible with the permission of Toronto International Festival of Authors. | — | ||||||
| 6/18/20 | ![]() Bruce Chatwin: The Songlines | Recorded in Toronto in 1986, this reading from Bruce Chatwin’s bestselling book, The Songlines, shows us the mastery that Chatwin developed as he both remains in the background of his scenes but also takes charge of the narrative via a colourful, all-knowing character, Arkady the Russian, and his travels into the Australian bush and the territories of Aboriginals. This ability for Chatwin to be a silent observer by allowing characters who were experts to take the lead (purportedly based on real people Chatwin met in his travels) was what made Chatwin such a unique writer and his style (and this rhetorical construction) has been so widely influential and used by so many writers hence that it may not always be apparent how incredibly talented he was as a storyteller. What is apparent, though, is what a great reader he is of his own work and how he takes us on this journey where, by the end, real life kicking in again seems stark and far less comical than the world we inhabited alongside him, the characters in our own lives far less colourful than the author’s. This audio is used with the permission of Georges Borchardt, Inc. for the Estate of Bruce Chatwin; the recording is also used with the permission of the Toronto International Festival of Authors. | — | ||||||
| 5/14/20 | ![]() Lee Maracle: The Raven | Recorded in Toronto in 1991, Lee Maracle, one of Canada’s most important and celebrated writers - of the Sto:lo Nation in Salish Territory (also called British Columbia) - gives a glimpse into the ways traumatic histories continue to haunt families, communities, individuals. In her distinctive voice which calls on and to the Raven again and again, we hear that passion and fire that Maracle is so famous for bringing to her readings, her activism and her art. A true performance by a truly great artist. This audio was recorded as part of Toronto’s International Readings at Harbourfront Series (now called TIFA) and is used with the kind permission of Lee Maracle and the Toronto International Festival of Authors. | — | ||||||
| 4/30/20 | ![]() Austin Clarke: Doing Right | When he appeared for this recording on a stage in 1985 at Harbourfront, Austin Clarke was already a well-known writer in Toronto, having published seven novels, three story collections, and a best-selling memoir, in addition to his work as a freelance journalist for the CBC and the dated, clichéd, “angriest Black man in Canada” label that critics used to characterize his activism. This story, “Doing Right” (from his 1986 collection, Nine Men Who Laughed) shows Clarke’s humour and light-heartedness, bringing the signature cadence and rhythms of his West Indian-inflected English to the voice and characters that inhabit this Toronto. Clarke shows how some members of a community respond as a “Wessindian” migrant tries his best to do what he feels is the right thing. Through the lens of time and place, we’re offered a glimpse of how stories of newcomers were pivotal in transforming “Toronto the Good,” from the staid and quiet collection of villages whose sidewalks rolled up at 6pm, to the colourful, vibrant and cosmopolitan city of today. | — | ||||||
| 4/16/20 | ![]() Gloria Naylor: Mama Day | Recorded live on stage in Toronto in 1988, American writer Gloria Naylor (1950-2016) reads from her 1989 novel, Mama Day, which in “the collective voice of the island” tells of a community with a rich history and proud heritage, forced to reckon with the modern world encroaching. Naylor’s reading is full of dark humour and rhythms that made her such an original talent - and a writer who was ahead of her time. Naylor’s reading was recorded as part of Toronto’s International Readings at Harbourfront Series (now called TIFA) and is used with the kind permission of Brilliance Audio, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and the Toronto International Festival of Authors. | — | ||||||
| 3/12/20 | ![]() Nikki Giovanni: Road Tripping | In this monologue performed on stage in 1991, American poet, Nikki Giovanni, shows us her associative mind in action, flitting around from current affair to current affair: the shameful way American society treats young Black men, the challenges and struggles of a young rapper called Tupac Shakur (several years before his untimely death), her dream of traveling to space even if only to open a beer and smoke a cigarette - and she’s just getting started. This series of soliloquies leads us everywhere and nowhere, but certain thoughts she expresses may linger in your mind: the fear that she feels for an instant when pulled over by a police officer during a long road trip with a friend - you think you know where the story is going and then she surprises you. | — | ||||||
| 2/27/20 | ![]() Grace Paley Saves the World | Though the audio has a few technical glitches and rough patches given the age of the recording, Grace Paley’s story within a story, which she performs herself on stage in 1994 in Toronto (a story she calls “Oliver’s Story,” but which was published under the title “The Story Hearer,” as part her 1985 collection, Later the Same Day), has many of the hallmarks that made Paley one of the English-language’s most original and intelligent short story writers. Starting around a dining room table conversation as a married couple compare their time off before the “hard time to come” (and in an nearly perfect opening paragraph), Paley’s narrator dives into the retelling of her day, moving from the humour of her domestic duties to her roundabout quest to buy greens while referencing Artaud and Surrealist French Theatre with the neighbourhood grocer. This charming and at times oblique story seems to cry out for multiple listenings as, with many of Paley’s stories, new images, new words, new ideas and new comic lines reveal themselves each time. | — | ||||||
| 2/13/20 | ![]() Nikki Giovanni: Soothing the Longings | With her incomparable style and humour, in riff-inspired digressions that are both funny and moving, Nikki Giovanni shows us an associative poet’s mind at work as she blends details of a domestic life with touchstones on the culture that has influenced her. In between long dives into, among other subjects, the commissioning of a poem for Mother’s Day and her attempt at not writing anything “tacky,” to what happens when Black men are made into an enemy in the culture, Giovanni performs three pieces: “A Poem for Langston Hughes,” “Hands for Mother's Day,” and “Ego-Tripping.” This episode shows us why Nikki Giovanni is truly an original talent. | — | ||||||
| 1/30/20 | ![]() A Life of Activism: Larry Kramer in Conversation with June Callwood | American writer, playwright and AIDS activist, Larry Kramer, talks with famed Canadian journalist and social activist, June Callwood (1924-2007), about his life as an activist writer, his struggles with censorship and apathy, his failed attempt at donating his estate to Yale University, and the complex relationship he has with the literary establishment. Volume 2 of Kramer’s The American People: The Brutality of Fact: A Novel, was released in January 2020. | — | ||||||
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Chart Positions
2 placements across 1 market.
Chart Positions
2 placements across 1 market.



















