Vespucci Launches 'Exploring The Greats' Podcast Series
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- Vespucci launched "Exploring The Greats," a video podcast book club featuring Rob Delaney, Tim Blake Nelson, and John Douglas Thompson, each paired with a university scholar to discuss a classic work.
- The series covers four literary works — Moby-Dick, Plato's Republic, Othello, and The Odyssey — with each book released as its own weekly series ranging from five to 38 episodes, available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.
- Rob Delaney, co-creator and star of Catastrophe and Hulu's new drama Furious, recorded his Moby-Dick segments at Herman Melville's former home and discusses the novel with Washington University in St. Louis Professor Hester Blum.
- Tim Blake Nelson (O Brother, Where Art Thou?) explores Plato's Republic with University of Chicago philosopher Agnes Callard, while John Douglas Thompson (HBO's The Gilded Age) tackles Othello with Columbia Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro.
- Mary Beard, Cambridge classicist and chair of the 2026 Booker Prize jury, covers The Odyssey with Guardian chief culture writer Charlotte Higgins — a pairing the article flags as "timely" given the recent launch of Christopher Nolan's Odyssey film.
- Vespucci co-founders Johnny Galvin and Daniel Turcan framed the series as a response to "an age of fractured attention," aiming to create "conditions for focus and immersion" in classic literature without losing "curiosity or play."
Why it matters: Vespucci's slate already includes Beard and Higgins's prior 38-part Odyssey series, so this is a strategic re-up timed to ride the wave of Nolan's blockbuster Odyssey release and pull curious audiences into the original poem. By pairing working actors in current prestige shows with tenured academics, Vespucci is betting the celebrity-scholar format can make dense classics — Plato, Melville, Shakespeare — more accessible than a traditional literary podcast.
