Podcast Episodes

Susanne Vees-Gulani, 'Icon Dresden: Baroque City, Air War Symbol, Political Token" (U Michigan Press, 2026)

Icon Dresden: Baroque City, Air War Symbol, Political Token (University of Michigan Press, 2026) by Dr. Susanne Vees-Gulani explores how memory and p…

5 months, 2 weeks ago

David Bather Woods, "Arthur Schopenhauer: The Life and Thought of Philosophy's Greatest Pessimist" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

Arthur Schopenhauer: The Life and Thought of Philosophy’s Greatest Pessimist by David Bather Woods

An engaging biography of one of the most influenti…

5 months, 2 weeks ago

The Vilna Gaon and the Making of Modern Judaism

The beginnings of contemporary Jewry are often associated with Jewish figures in Western Europe such as Moses Mendelssohn. But in his book, The Geniu…

5 months, 3 weeks ago

Philip C. Almond, "Noah and the Flood in Western Thought" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

In a world beset by climatic emergencies, the continuing resonance of the flood story is perhaps easy to understand. Whether in the tortured alpha ma…

5 months, 3 weeks ago

Sunmin Kim, "The Unruly Facts of Race: The Politics of Knowledge Production in the Early Twentieth-Century Immigration Debate" (U Chicago Press, 2026)

What happens when theories of racial hierarchies interact with reality? How are they contested, refuted and changed in light of that encounter? What …

5 months, 3 weeks ago

H. S. Jones, "Liberal Worlds: James Bryce and the Democratic Intellect" (Princeton UP, 2025)

James Bryce (1838–1922) was a leading figure in Britain’s Liberal Party and a distinguished historian, a versatile scholar-politician who moved seaml…

5 months, 3 weeks ago

Alec Ryrie, "The Age of Hitler and How We Will Survive It" (Reaktion, 2025)

Examining everything from popular novels to politics, an investigation of persistent fascination with Nazis—and where it might take us.

We live in an…

5 months, 4 weeks ago

William H. F. Altman, "Ascent to the Good: The Reading Order of Plato’s Dialogues from Symposium to Republic" (Lexington, 2018)

At the crisis of his Republic, Plato asks us to imagine what could possibly motivate a philosopher to return to the Cave voluntarily for the benefit …

5 months, 4 weeks ago

Tristan J. Rogers, "Conservatism, Past and Present: A Philosophical Introduction" (Routledge, 2025)

In Conservatism, Past and Present: A Philosophical Introduction (Routledge, 2025), Tristan J. Rogers argues that philosophical conservatism is a c…

5 months, 4 weeks ago

Wendy Brown, "States of Injury: Power and Freedom in Late Modernity" (Princeton UP, 2025)

A sympathetic critique that attempts to free Left politics from its own snares, States of Injury: Power and Freedom in Late Modernity (Princeton Univ…

6 months ago