E575 | What could historians have to say about a fantasy novel? The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi, published in 2023, follows an aging mother and captain on magical adventures across the twelfth-century Indian Ocean world with her crew. It has been read widely, hitting bestseller lists in the US and being translated into eight languages. In this episode, a group of historians discusses the novel with its author, Shannon Chakraborty. Our conversation covers gender and geography, language and literature, piety and piracy, and of course, magic.

More at https://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2025/11/chakraborty.html

CREDITS

Episode No. 575
Release Date: 16 November 2025
Sound Production by Shireen Hamza
Music: O-Shin by Nyentek; Bahrain - Fidgeri: Songs of the Pearl Divers, recorded by Habib Hassan Touma, courtesy of Smithsonian Folkways Recordings; Arabic Music - Music performed by men from area of Ibri (major town of Dhahirah Region) by BBC Sounds

A Sea of Sorcery: Roundtable with Shannon Chakraborty

Mahmood Kooria - Piracy

Rebecca Hankins - Faith, Freedom, and Favors

KD Thompson - The Swahili Coast

Liana Saif - Witches

Shireen Hamza - Transformation

Fahad Bishara - Voyage Stories: The Natural and Supernatural on the Deck of a Dhow

Hamnet, the acclaimed novel by Maggie O’Farrell, is now a major film. The story imagines the life and death of Shakespeare’s son, Hamnet, whose loss would later echo through one of his most famous tragedies, Hamlet.  O’Farrell joins director and co-writer Chloé Zhao to reveal how they adapted the novel for the big screen.

With Jessie Buckley as Agnes and Paul Mescal as William, the film reframes the Shakespeare family story as one of deep love, rupturing grief, and artistic creation. O’Farrell and Zhao discuss developing the screenplay together, interpreting Shakespeare as a husband and father, building the film’s immersive natural world, and shaping an unforgettable Globe Theatre sequence that anchors the emotional arc of the story.

O’Farrell and Zhao talk about adaptation, artistry, and how a 400-year-old loss continues to inspire new ways of imagining Shakespeare’s life and legacy.

From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published December 2, 2025. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This episode was produced by Matt Frassica. Garland Scott is the executive producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. We had help with web production from Paola García Acuña. Leonor Fernandez edits our transcripts. We had technical help from Hamish Brown in Stirling, Scotland, and Voice Trax West in Studio City, California. Final mixing services provided by Clean Cuts at Three Seas, Inc.

Hamnet, with Chloe Zhao and Maggie O'Farrell

E576 |  The seventeenth century has often been characterized as a period of disorder and religious polemics in the Ottoman Empire. In this podcast, Nir Shafir takes us inside his new book, which argues that the polemics of the early modern Ottoman world were fueled in part by changes in communication, namely the rise of short pamphlets that circulated easily in handwritten copies. Pamphlets created a new arena largely independent from the institutional centers of knowledge production where people debated everyday questions of the time about what it meant to be Muslim. In exploring the world of Ottoman pamphlets, Shafir also offers a new introduction to the nature of Ottoman education, book production, and reading practices prior to the rise of print and modern state institutions. 

More at https://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2025/12/shafir.html

Nir Shafir is Associate Professor of History at University of California, San Diego. His first book, The Order and Disorder of Communication: Pamphlets and Polemics in the Seventeenth-Century Ottoman Empire (Stanford, 2024), was awarded 2025 Book Prize from the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association. Shafir is also a longtime contributor to the Ottoman History Podcast, formerly serving as editor-in-chief and appearing in over 50 episodes since 2013.

Maryam Patton is Assistant Professor of History at Wesleyan University. Her research interests span the cultural and intellectual history of the late medieval and early modern Ottoman Empire, the history and theories of time and temporality, and cross-cultural transmission in the Mediterranean world, among others. She received her PhD in History and Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard University and is preparing her first book on the Ottoman conception of time.

CREDITS

Episode No. 576
Release Date: 6 December 2025
Sound production by Maryam Patton
Music: "Vibing Over Venus" by Kevin MacLeod

Pamphlets and Polemics in the 17th-Century Ottoman Empire | Nir Shafir

Dr. Lisa Fagin Davis speaks with Aylin about digital paleography and the Voynich Manuscript (Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, MS 408). By using DigiPal to compare the glyphs, Dr. Davis discovered that this undeciphered manuscript was originally written by five different scribes. 

Details: https://podcast.digitalmedievalist.org/episode-2-voynich-scribes
Transcript: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jAVbZR0bVuvO8B5OEXKY_AIGuXQHnZTc/view?usp=sharing

Theme music by TeknoAXE (“Chiptune Nobility,” CC BY 4.0). Background music by TeknoAXE (“Lowly Tavern Bard – Fall is Upon Us,” CC BY 4.0) and Random Mind (“Minstrel Dance,” CC0). 

Dr. Davis’s research is published in Manuscript Studies (https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/42257). Starting in May 2021, this article will be available for free at https://repository.upenn.edu/mss_sims.

Recorded on April 2, 2020. Produced and transcribed by Aylin Malcolm.

Episode 2: Scribes of the Voynich Manuscript (Lisa Fagin Davis)

A podcast on medieval studies in the digital world, hosted by the early-career scholars of the Digital Medievalist Postgraduate Committee. 

This account features the first season of Coding Codices and is no longer being updated. For more episodes, transcripts, and other resources, check out our website at https://podcast.digitalmedievalist.org.

Episode 2: Scribes of the Voynich Manuscript (Lisa Fagin Davis)

Coding Codices: A Digital Medievalist Podcast

Related tracks