Writer’s Voice: compelling conversations with authors who challenge, inspire, and inform.



Episode Summary



In this episode of Writer’s Voice, we explore the lives and legacies of two giants—Charles Dickens and Plato—through the eyes of authors who reveal new dimensions of their work.



Cultural historian Peter Conrad tells us about his biography, Dickens the Enchanter: Dickens didn’t just depict Victorian society—he conjured an entire imaginative universe he called “Planet Dick.” Conrad examines Dickens as an enchanter, social critic, and visionary.




“What he was creating was not some sort of mirror or model of a world that already existed as other 19th century novelists were doing…He was creating an autonomous world, a world of his own, almost a science fiction world.” — Peter Conrad




Then, historian James Romm joins us to talk about Plato and the Tyrant. He shows how Plato’s philosophy wasn’t just abstract theory—it was shaped by his fraught entanglement with tyrants in ancient Syracuse. Romm uncovers how those experiences influenced The Republic and still echo in our contemporary struggles with democracy and authoritarianism.




“My students at Bard saw the dark side of the Republic, its authoritarianism, its interest in censorship, thought control, regulation of private life on a scale that I’ve compared in my book to that of modern North Korea.” — James Romm




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Key Words:



Peter Conrad Dickens the Enchanter, Charles Dickens biography, Dickens Planet Dick, James Romm Plato and the Tyrant, Plato Republic, philosopher king, Syracuse Dionysius, democracy vs autocracy, Writer’s Voice Francesca Rheannon



You might also like: James Romm, THE SACRED BAND, James Romm, DYING EVERY DAY










Segment 1: Peter Conrad



In his book Dickens the Enchanter, Peter Conrad casts Charles Dickens as something more than a novelist—he’s a magician, a conjurer, almost a god-like creator. Conrad shows us how Dickens transformed his own turbulent experiences into a literary universe so vivid it became its own world—what he called “Planet Dick.”



The book explores both the light and dark sides of Dickens’s imagination: from his playful, almost mystical love of language, to the eerie visions that haunted his nights in London, and the spectral figures that filled works like A Christmas Carol. Dickens’s characters weren’t just inventions; they were his “...