“Who Murdered the Vets?” is one of the most important non-fiction pieces Hemingway ever wrote. This 1935 article for New Masses excoriated the Roosevelt administration’s careless supervision of World War I veterans who died during the Labor Day hurricane while they were living in workcamps along the Keys. Stationed there to help to build the overseas highway, more than 250 died as victims of the cataclysmic storm.

Hemingway wrote what he called his “2800 words of dynamite” in a frothing rage, furious at the irresponsibility of the government, shocked at what he had witnessed firsthand, and grieving for the veterans who survived the Great War, only to lose their lives at home.

To discuss this explosive article and its crucial context, we welcome James H. Meredith, the former President of the Hemingway Society. Jim’s perspective walks us through Hemingway’s approach to this tragedy and how he composed such a vivid, emotional polemic.

She called him “the most fascinating man I know.” He called her “the Kraut.” Hemingway’s relationship with the iconic entertainer Marlene Dietrich has been an intriguing wrinkle to both of their careers and lives. To separate myth from fact, and to allow us to learn more about Miss Dietrich and her singular accomplishments in song and cinema, we welcome Peter Riva, the grandson of the legendary actress.

In this episode, we explore how they met, why they clicked so powerfully, why they remained platonic, how she felt about his writing, and how he felt about her film performances. Peter Riva is a candid, generous guest who provides a unique perspective to Dietrich as a grandma and Hemingway as a memorable houseguest.

Join us for this discussion about the Hemingway-Dietrich relationship… and stay tuned for some surprise outro music!

After Hemingway’s first wife, Hadley, became aware of his extramarital affair with Pauline Pfeiffer, she became resigned to the end of their marriage. Before she agreed to the divorce, however, she issued an extraordinary provision to Hemingway and Pauline: that they spend one hundred days apart! If they still wanted to stay together after those hundred days, Hadley would consent to the divorce.

To explore this bizarre episode in Hemingway’s life, we welcome Gioia Diliberto, biographer of Hadley Richardson, and Adam Long, director of the Hemingway-Pfeiffer Museum, the family home of Pauline Pfeiffer. Diliberto and Long each share details about all the members of this messy love triangle and how it forms the legacy of the phase of Hemingway’s life that would inspire A Moveable Feast.

We discuss who these people were in 1926 and what they wanted, what motivated this 100-Day Challenge, all of its implications, and its outcome.

The great Italian scholar Martina Mastandrea, who spoke with us in 2023 to discuss "In Another Country," joins us again to discuss another Hemingway tale: "Out of Season."

After Mastandrea treats us to an Italian rendition of the opening to "Out of Season," we explore many aspects of the story, including its biographical inspiration, connections to other Hemingway texts (like "Cat in the Rain" and "Hills Like White Elephants"), the role Cortina plays as a setting, and ways to read the famous ending.

This celebrated story is always in-season, so please join us as Martina Mastandrea guides us through it!

When Ernest Hemingway was interviewed by George Plimpton in 1958, he listed Johann Sebastian Bach fourth among those forebears he learned the most from. “I should think,” he told Plimpton, “what one learns from composers and from the study of harmony and counterpoint would be obvious.” It isn’t.

So, to help us understand how Bach influenced Hemingway's writing – in particular the first page of A Farewell to Arms – we welcome organist and Bach scholar, David Yearsley.

With an expert to guide us, we explore Bach's biography and connections between these two artistic titans, discussing which of Bach's works Hemingway responded to most powerfully and how the music of “Mr. Johann” finds its way into Hemingway’s WWI novel as well as other writings, such as To Have and Have Not.

We are also privileged that David Yearsley agreed to play some Bach for us to illustrate counterpoint and other related ideas, so we hope you enjoy this special show!

Join us as Carl Eby takes us into the nooks and crannies of the Hemingway archives at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston. We will discuss the legendary JFK #112 and JFK #113, two discarded and highly provocative chapters from Hemingway’s posthumous novel Islands in the Stream.

We explore where the discarded material in the JFK Library fits into Islands in the Stream, who cut it and why, and how Hemingway studies would have been different if the novel had included this charged material. We also closely examine certain words from these files, such as "perversions" and "surprize" and “devil.”

Eby is President of the Hemingway Society and has focused much of his research on Hemingway's posthumous work. Recently, he published Reading Hemingway's The Garden of Eden for Kent State University Press’s Reading Hemingway series. Eby has joined us previously for an episode on The Garden of Eden manuscripts, and he also inaugurated our One True Sentence series with One True Sentence #1, a discussion of Hemingway's "Paris 1922" sketches.

Thanks for your continued support of One True Podcast!

One True Podcast begins this year’s occasional commemoration of In Our Time’s 100th anniversary with a show devoted to one of its highlights. To discuss Hemingway’s classic story “Soldier’s Home,” we invite the author of Soldiers Once and Still, Alex Vernon.

We discuss Harold Krebs and his war experience on the Western Front of World War I, his painful reentry into his former life, and his strained relationship with his mother. We also examine the extraordinary language Hemingway uses to capture Krebs's tortured consciousness and explore this story’s placement among Hemingway’s career of chronicling men at war. As the author of the first literary biography of Tim O’Brien, Alex describes Krebs’s frustration at the difficulty of telling his own true war stories and compares it with the same idea in O’Brien’s The Things They Carried.

On this, our 150th episode of One True Podcast, join us for a conversation about an essential Hemingway short story. Thank you for listening, rating the program, and spreading the word!

Seventy-five years ago, Lillian Ross published “How Do You Like It Now, Gentlemen?” in The New Yorker, her longform profile of Hemingway’s 1950 visit to New York City. Ross spent time with Hemingway as he shopped for a coat, visited with Marlene Dietrich, took his son Patrick to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, met with Charles Scribner, and talked enthusiastically about his forthcoming novel, Across the River and into the Trees.

This profile has been polarizing since its publication: Did Ross deliver a subtle takedown? Did Hemingway embarrass himself with his odd mannerisms? Should Hemingway never have agreed to it? Should The New Yorker never have published it? Is this, ultimately, the most intimate and penetrating portrait of the later Hemingway ever written?

To explore this iconic profile and the journalist who wrote it, we welcome Susan Morrison, who serves as Lillian Ross’s literary executor. Morrison is the Articles Editor at The New Yorker and the author of Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live.

We hope you enjoy this episode and always remember: “what you win in Boston, you lose in Chicago!”