Episodes

Twitter/X Facebook How should we think about the danger and possible utility (?) of “Artificial Intelligence,” that increasingly out-of-control oxymoron? Maybe a report from the field is in order as we begin to look at this question. This is that report from the field, or at least a beginning of one. We may have to start early because we have no time to waste, for the sake of student learning, in getting this right. Twitter/X Facebook

Twitter/X Facebook A message from Dr. Thomas Patterson of Harvard Univerity: “Tomorrow, Sept. 17, is National Constitution Day— marking the 239th anniversary of the signing of the U.S. Constitution. As in other years, it will pass largely unnoticed despite its significance and relevance at this critical moment in our politics. I’m trying to elevate its visibility by encouraging people to take my free, nonpartisan HarvardX course on the U.S. Constitution (6 brief sessions). I’d be grateful if...

This is a tour of Chapter 6 from "The American Yawp" on The American Revolution. You need to read the chapter after listening to this. This audio tour is no substitute for reading the chapter.

Twitter/X Facebook Your host for Audibly Speaking, Rick Reiman, speaks with Gabra Zackman about her career in the ever-more-popular field of audio books and narration. Gabra had narrated over 500 books, including such titles as The Sound and the Fury, Nobody’s Girl, Catch the Devil, G-Man, and I’ll be Gone in the Dark, among many others. An accomplished actor, I ask her about how she got started in the craft, what she thinks about the parceling out of assignments to male and female readers, ho...

Twitter/X Facebook Tomorrow is America’s 250th Birthday as an independent nation. Your narrator for Audibly Speaking rings in the birthday in suitable vocal style with an audio narration of that fateful document. The Declaration of July 4, 1776 was not just a statement of independence but a declaration of ideals that has changed the world. Will we, the generation that is the heir of the founding fathers, allow its ringing words to continue shaping the world, or will the American people themselv...

Twitter/X Facebook On July 4, 2026, Americans will celebrate…what? Obviously they will celebrate what they intend to celebrate. That means American’s “Independence Day.” But what does that mean? According to the Cato Institute’s poll released today, 46% of Americans are clueless as to what it means. The reason is clear: their ignorance of history. This should not be surprising since Americans popularize “history” as something to be considered over and done with. But that popular stance, and shi...

Twitter/X Facebook Ai is perhaps the ruination of higher education, at least as it is currently being used by many students with a shameless push from the new barbarians at the gates, the techies who come up with this stuff and promise that it will solve all the individuals woes and help them “succeed” in school. Well, evidently “success’ does not include learning, because there is no more effective if deadly way to squelch learning than through machine learning, where only the machine “learns,...

Twitter/X Facebook In this episode, Audibly Speaking denounces the clown car of politicians (in Florida, of course!) presuming to be the voice of history, only without any educational credentials. Shamelessness aside, they just can’t stay in their lane. In this episode I look at one of the mainstream textbooks in American History, The American Yawp, the work of 500 historians who have the credentials and the “receipts” of American history to portray the pageant of that history, warts and all. T...

Twitter/X Facebook Presidential Leadership 101 holds that no President should enter a war without first cultivating the support of the American people. Efforts to do so without securing public support–the Mexican War, Vietnam–have been disasters. No president should just suddenly and unconstitutionally attack another country without Congressional consultation, approval or public education, like the Japanese did at Pearl Harbor. In the aftermath of such an act, it became more important than ever...

Twitter/X Facebook No one, going back to the interpretation of William Gillette in the early years of the silent screen cinema, interpreted the Sherlock Holmes character with the authenticity that Jeremy Brett brought to the role in the ITV Granada series on British television (1984-1994). That series went back to the canonical short stories and lovingly adapted them to the screen, clearing away the distortions that past (and future) representations have rained down and continue to rain on the ...

Twitter/X Facebook I have never recorded an abridged version of a Sherlock Holmes mystery short story, not wishing to truncate the words of the great Conan Doyle. However, it occurred to me that the time of three half-hour sitcoms may be too much for listeners to bear to listen to a Holmes short story. In order to guard against this pity, I have recorded this abridged version of a humorous yet exciting Holmes short story, abridging it to under two half hour sitcoms in length. I started out the ...

Twitter/X Facebook We lost Ruth Paine this year on August 31. Ruth was a great lady, one of the few heroes and persons of kindness in the run-up and the aftermath of the JFK assassination. As Thomas Mallon has noted, we know so much about the moods, mind and appearances of Lee Harvey Oswald in the critical six weeks before the assassination because Oswald sometimes stayed at Ruth’s house, used Ruth’s typerwriter, and visited Ruth’s home the night before the assassination to retrieve something f...

Twitter Facebook In my series of brand new readings of earlier recordings I had released in my more inexperienced narrative career, I introduce the latest of these: The Conan Doyle story. “The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton.” Here again, Holmes must battle against no ordinary villain, but against a blackmailer of the most sinister antecedents. Has there ever been a bad guy more oily and rotten than Charles Milverton? Maybe the Grinch, perhaps. But Milverton was a villain for all seasons...

Twitter Facebook For Christmas this year, I roll out an encore presentation of my narration of Arthur Conan Doyle’s greatest short story, “The Adventure of the Bruce Partington Plans.” The English government is paralyzed by fear as its most closely guarded secret is stolen or bought by an international spy. Its “most exalted person” (obviously Queen Victoria herself) is closely following the one man who can “save the state,” Sherlock Holmes. Noth even Sherlock’s older and smarter brother, Mycrof...

Twitter Facebook I continue the narration of A. C. Bradley’s famous lectures on the Tragedies of William Shakespeare, one of the finest in all of the critiques of these legendary plays. Twitter Facebook

Twitter Facebook In keeping with the other two encore recordings of major entries in the Sherlock Holmes canon of short stories, the “Abbey Grange” and the “Second Stain.” I narrate once again, in what I hope will be a new and improved cover of “The Adventure of Black Peter.” I hope you enjoy this entry in Sherlockean entertainment, on the eve of this holiday season. Sincerely yours, your narrator, Rick Reiman. Twitter Facebook

Twitter Facebook And now for something completely different… Here is an audio introduction to the English literary critic, A.C. Bradley, and his legendary lectures on the high tragedies of William Shakespeare: the plays of Othello, Hamlet, Macbeth and King Lear. Bradley has been mute too long, buried in the mass of materials not properly advertised or displayed to the public in Project Gutenberg. If to live in the light is to to live in the light of Shakespeare, to hear the light of truth is to...

Twitter Facebook Close on the heels of the brilliant “Adventure of the Abbey Grange” was one of Conan Doyle’s masterworks, his short story, “The Adventure of the Norwood Builder.” Any writer who wishes to toss into the ring a Sherlock Holmes pastiche of his own, will likely think twice before doing so upon reading this story, which bids fair to be close to the pinnacle of Doyle’s work. While I recorded it some years ago during the early days of my acquaintance with the art of podcasting, I have ...

Twitter Facebook I have had the pleasure of recording nearly all of the Sherlock Holmes short stories for this podcast, but one stands out among all the others, both as a recording effort and as a story by the great Conan Doyle. That is THIS story, a BRAND NEW RE-READING of “The Adventure of the Abbey Grange.” I first recorded this in the summer of 2022, in the early stages of my recovery from my first bout with COVID-19. You can still listen to that version, if you go back through my episodes t...

Twitter Facebook Here is an audio narration by Dr. Richard Reiman of this famous FDR speech. Twitter Facebook

Twitter Facebook “The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone,” by Dr. Arthur Conan Doyle, was one of two stories in the canon which was told not in the voice of Dr. John Watson but in third-person. Intended as the basis of a play, a one-act drama, it consists mainly of dialogue between two individuals at a time. Most of the time Holmes is one of the two persons, but not always. The device was necessary to make the surprise of the story possible. The story was published in the UK and in the US in 1921. I...

Twitter Facebook Well, it has been quite an odyssey. Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic episodes have been narrated by readers like Stephen Fry, for a cost; and by readers like your host, for free, in the spirit of the 18th century Enlightenment. This series has been other-directed–directed to others–without charge or fee. The hope is to spread cheer and enjoyment of the mysteries of an extraordinary writer and his remarkable detective. Please let me know, at rreiman33@gmail.com, if you have enjoyed t...

Twitter Facebook In this year of 2025, we celebrate the centennial of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. I have recorded the first three chapters of the heartbreaking novel, and the latest chapter is out today! I have links to all three chapters below should you wish to listen to them in order. Perhaps you, too, admire the green light on the far horizon. Watch out, because it may be the chimera of the “American Dream,” an apparition best left in quotation marks as airy as the cocktails on G...

Twitter Facebook In 1922, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle capped his marvelous series of Sherlock Holmes story with an entry in the series to rival any of his best: “The Problem of Thor Bridge.” How fitting that Doyle’s last great Holmes story may be the final Holmes story narrated by yours truly, Rick Reiman, for I am moving on to other academic contributions that may better suit my talents and more greatly increase the sum of my contributions to academic learning in these, the two thousands and twentie...