The heroes of the Trojan War go toe to toe in an epic rap battle. Hesiod sings a bluegrass hoedown. Zeus descends from a spaghetti western to sing about his sexual exploits. In this collection, Mesopotamia, Ancient Egypt, and Archaic Greece are all woven into fourteen ridiculous, multi-genre songs. This bundle of comedic music about books spans the songs featured in episodes 1-14 of the Literature and History podcast. Songs About Books, Volume 1 begins with the anthem, "I Learned it in a Podcast," a kooky and sprawling introduction to history podcasting in general, then moves forward through the Bronze and Early Iron ages, tackling topics as diverse as cuneiform, ancient Egyptian prayers for the preservation of one's eyebrows, history's first mullets, and Odysseus' sultry tryst with a cyclops.

Price here: $5.99

Track Listing

1. I Learned It in a Podcast (5:46)
2. The Days of Cuneiform (0:48)
3. Babylon's Alcoholic Gods (0:47)
4. May My Eyebrows Live Forever (0:55)
5. The Eloquent Peasant Rap (1:40)
6. Please Dial Down the Misogyny (1:23)
7. Hesiod's Bluegrass Biography (1:22)
8. It Is Time for Zeus to Have Sex (2:03)
9. History's First Mullets (1:15)
10. The Story of the Weasel Hat (1:45)
11. Trojan War Epic Rap Battle (5:38)
12. Trapped on the Island of Calypso (1:12)
13. Eumaeus the Swineherd (1:13)
14. Odysseus Comes Home (5:58)
15. Yes, Socrates (6:13)

Download Specs: 68 MB; 1 Zipped File Containing 16 MP3 Files

Hear the creation story of Genesis retold in the form of an 80s workout anthem, or the Pentateuch's commandments rendered into a bluegrass bootslapper. The tragic story of Job becomes a comedic dub step opera in the listener favorite "Boom Boom Boom Sea Monster." Songs About Books, Volume 2 includes the tunes featured in episodes 15-24 of the Literature and History podcast - original music that takes the greatest stories ever told and, using a different genre in nearly every track, clowns around with them. Volume 2 includes the gangster rap song "Rolling into Canaan," the soulful "Your Hair is Like Goats," and, in a closing salvo on the Prophetic Books, the kindermetal track, "Happy Lambs and Doom," along with others. It's a fun, lighthearted look at the sometimes dark and ponderous world of the Hebrew Bible, designed for anyone who's ever dipped into the Old Testament and noted some of the wackier things written there.

Price here: $5.99

Track Listing

1. It's Time to Read the Bible (1:47)
2. It's Long (3:56)
3. The Creation of the World (5:49)
4. The 613 Commandments (5:16)
5. Rolling Into Canaan (6:23)
6. Boom Boom Boom Sea Monster (5:56)
7. Ancient Hebrew FM (6:06)
8. Modern Day Ecclesiastes (5:18)
9. Your Hair Is Like Goats (4:52)
10. Happy Lambs and Doom (6:26)

Download Specs: 87 MB; 1 Zipped File Containing 10 MP3 Files

From hard rock to barbershop, 80s power ballad to sea shanty, folk to hip hop, and more, Songs about Books, Volume 3 takes the literature and culture of Classical Greece and weaves it into fourteen comic tunes. Hear Oedipus tell his story in the lyrics of "Oedipus the King," or the tale of Lysistrata in "Lysistrata in Three Minutes." Rock out with Medea in the Russo-English "She Will Never Backing Down," or stomp your foot to the hip hop anthem "Interview with Dionysus." Songs about Books, Volume 3 is a journey through the greatest literature of Classical Greece, in musical form. In all of its spirited absurdity, the album is nonetheless a tribute to some of the ancient world's greatest literature, and classicists and general readers alike should get a kick out of the album's zany take on Ancient Greece.

Price here: $5.99

Track Listing

1. Golden Age Athens
2. Hello, My Name is Agamemnon
3. The Oresteian Hoedown
4. Flap Flap Flap They're the Furies
5. Oedipus the King
6. An Unpersuasive Call to Arms
7. She Will Never Backing Down
8. Interview with Dionysus
9. Aristophanes Barbershop
10. Lysistrata in Three Minutes
11. Alexander the. . .um. . .Great
12. The Golden Moby-Dick Fleece
13. Jason's Power Ballad

Download Specs: 116 MB; 1 Zipped File Containing 13 MP3 Files

The 27 songs from Literature and History’s enormous fourth season cover almost every genre, running the range from waltzes, to folk, hip hop, speed metal, 80s hard rock, barbershop, R&B, country, and more. Hear Cicero’s orations in rap songs, or Virgil’s Cyclops singing a power ballad. Hear Ovid offering terrible romantic advice, Seneca whimpering about exile, Augustus begging someone to write him an epic, and Marcus Aurelius making the ill-advised decision to pass the empire down to Commodus. Roman history is magnificent, but it’s also weird, and throughout this wide range of songs, Literature and History pokes fun at the oddities, the hypocrisies, and the self-important bluster of Ancient Roman culture and literature.

Price here: $5.99

Track Listing

1. Stupid Puns About Rome
2. Let's Write a Romantic Comedy
3. Would You Like to Be My Son
4. Roman Senate Barbershop
5. First Catilinarian Rap
6. The Last Philippic
7. Catullus' Love Song
8. Augustus Asks for an Epic
9. Cyclops Power Ballad
10. The Epic Cycle Waltz
11. The Gods are Insane
12. Another Siege
13. Dear Pallas
14. Arrogant Love Song
15. Ovid in Elegiacs
16. Bad Advice from Ovid
17. Nothing Says I Love You Like Cannibalism
18. Ovid Barbershop
19. The Exile Song
20. I'm a Stoic
21. A Day in the Life of Seneca
22. Let's Go to the Woods
23. Yet Another Orgy
24. Paradise Glossed
25. The Juvenal Song
26. The Golden Ass
27. Some Day, My Son

Download Specs: 186 MB; 1 Zipped File Containing 27 MP3 Files

The fun continues in Literature and History's fifth compilation of comedy songs - tunes inspired by the New Testament and Early Christian world. Beginning with "Herod Hoedown," a country song about the ancient Idumaean king ruling over Galilee when Jesus was born, the compilation soon moves into Christianity proper. "The Christology Song," a tune about the major Christological controversies that fueled the Christianity's first ecumenical councils, romps through all of the main Christological formulae in the religion's early history, comparing each one to a mixed drink. Next up, "Don't Drink Blood" admonishes you to follow one of the Second Temple period's most cherished commandments, while the "Peter and Paul Rap Battle" imagines the so-called Apostolic Incident at Antioch as a musical sparring contest, done in verse. "Flying on the Wings of a Goat," a metal track, envisions Satan as a bad roommate, while in "Ancient Persian Bluegrass," a trio of American hillbillies reminisce about the glories of the Achaemenid, Parthian, and Sasanian Empires. The album closes with "Too Cool for the World," a lampoon of Platonic horizontal dualism, and "Augustine the Manichee," a hip hop tune imagining Augustine's conversion to, and then departure from Manichaeism.

Price here: $5.99

Track Listing

1. Herod Hoedown
2. The Christology Song
3. Don't Drink Blood
4. Peter and Paul Rap Battle
5. Flying on the Wings of a Goat
6. Ancient Persian Bluegrass
7. Too Cool for the World
8. Augustine the Manichee

Download Specs: 67 MB; 1 Zipped File Containing 8 MP3 Files

If you enjoy the comedy songs that end Literature and History, this is the collection for you! Containing every single track of Songs About Books, Volumes 1-5, this compilation is a trip down memory lane for your Literature and History experience, inviting you to revisit Mesopotamia, Ancient Egypt and Israel, and some of the oddities and curios of Ancient Greece and Rome. Whether you use them as a pedagogical tool or just a lighthearted distraction, this bundle of over 70 tunes is a fun way to brighten up your day!

Price here: $19.99

Download Specs: 529 MB; 1 Zipped File Containing 74 MP3 Files Organized in Subfolders

Free

This free bonus episode is on Maffeo Vegio's 1428 addition to Virgil's Aeneid. Vegio's addendum, in true Renaissance epic style, adds eulogies for Turnus, growing amity between the Trojans and Italians in the days after the war's end, a romance between Lavinia and Aeneas, and, finally tells of how Venus deified her son at the end of his life. The story of how and why Maffeo Vegio wrote his thirteenth book of the Aeneid is a wonderful case study of how Greco-Roman texts began to circulate in Europe in the fifteenth century in unprecedented numbers, and, moreover how Renaissance humanism began in earnest. Tap ADD TO CART and then Checkout to download the MP3. You'll need to enter your email address and then you can download the file onto your device or save it to a dropbox account.

Download Specs: 45 MB; 1 MP3