Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchThomas Smith, "The Fifth Crusade: A History of the Epic Campaign to Conquer Egypt" (Yale UP, 2026)
Episode 2583
In 1217, the crusader states were in a highly fragile condition. The Fourth Crusade had failed, and Jerusalem had not been recovered. The crusader…
3 months, 1 week ago
Rod Phillips, "Cats: A History" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2026)
Episode 2582
For more than 10,000 years, cats have prowled at the edges of human life. But, starting only a few decades ago, hundreds of millions of them becam…
3 months, 1 week ago
A. G. Hopkins, "The Land Where Nothing Works: How Britain Lost the Plot" (Princeton UP, 2026)
Episode 2581
What has happened to Britain? As drivers on its roads can attest, it is the pothole capital of Europe. Once-beautiful towns now feature peeling pai…
3 months, 2 weeks ago
Roberta J. Magnusson, "Urban Infrastructure in Medieval England: Sustainability and Resilience" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2026)
Episode 2580
In the bustling market towns and growing cities of medieval England between 1200 and 1600, public works were the lifelines of urban society. In Ur…
3 months, 2 weeks ago
Bjørn Berge, "Smell: The Tale of a Fading Sense" (Reaktion Books, 2026)
Episode 2579
The sense of smell is often linked to the dark, the antisocial, the primitive—the very opposite of modernity and progress. Today we live in an alm…
3 months, 2 weeks ago
Chinese EVs: From Nordic Streets to Central Asian Hubs
Episode 2578
Can Europe afford to stand back as China rewrites the global electric vehicle (EV) ecosystem? In this episode, Julie Yu-Wen Chen at the University of…
3 months, 3 weeks ago
Jeremy D. Popkin, "The First Emancipation: The Forgotten History of Abolition in Revolutionary France" (Princeton UP, 2026)
Episode 2577
The First Emancipation: The Forgotten History of Abolition in Revolutionary France (Princeton UP, 2026) is a dramatic account of how slavery and rac…
3 months, 3 weeks ago
Cleo Nisse, "Venetian Canvas and the Transformation of Painting" (Princeton UP, 2026)
Episode 2576
Between the fifteenth and early seventeenth centuries, European painting underwent a profound transformation as artists increasingly painted on ca…
3 months, 3 weeks ago
Charles J. Stivale, "Unfolding the Deleuze Seminars, 1970–1987: Summaries and Commentary" (Edinburgh UP, 2025)
Episode 2575
From the inside flap:
“A rich resource of Deleuze’s research that is unavailable in his published writing
Includes summaries of 216 seminar sessio…3 months, 4 weeks ago
Catherine Fletcher, "The Firearm Revolution: From Renaissance Italy to the European Empires" (Princeton UP, 2026)
Episode 2574
In Renaissance Italy, the gun was not only a tool of war but also a desirable object, a luxury item carried at court. Guns were in use on the battl…
4 months ago