Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchBeronda L. Montgomery, "When Trees Testify: Science, Wisdom, History, and America’s Black Botanical Legacy" (Henry Holt & Co.)
The histories of trees in America are also the histories of Black Americans. Pecan trees were domesticated by an enslaved African named Antoine; syca…
3 weeks, 3 days ago
James Loeffler, "Exceptional Hatred: Antisemitism and the Fight over Free Speech in Modern America" (Metropolitan Books, 2026)
A leading historian’s revelatory exploration of antisemitism in the United States—from 1940s anti-Jewish riots until today—showing that it has long…
3 weeks, 6 days ago
Eric Hoffer's "The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements" (1951): A Discussion with Jay Garfinkel
Episode 117
A stevedore on the San Francisco docks in the 1940s, who eventually taught at the University of California at Berkeley, Eric Hoffer wrote philosophic…
4 weeks ago
Kathleen J. Frydl, "Liberalism and the Reinvention of Corporate Personhood" (Oxford UP, 2026)
This is a really good book. Really good. Liberalism and the Reinvention of the Modern Corporation (Oxford UP, 2026) takes the reader on a fascinating…
4 weeks, 1 day ago
Why the Roman Empire Fell: On Edward Gibbon with Hugh Liebert
250 years ago when the United States declared independence, Edward Gibbon across the ocean published the first volume of his magisterial series, The …
4 weeks, 1 day ago
Jarvis C. McInnis, "Afterlives of the Plantation: Plotting Agrarian Futures in the Global Black South" (Columbia UP, 2025)
Built on the grounds of a former cotton plantation, the Tuskegee Institute, founded by Booker T. Washington, offered agricultural and industrial ed…
4 weeks, 2 days ago
Sima Qian–China’s Grand Historian
John Ross chats with repeat guest Tim McGirk about Sima Qian (c. 145–86 BC), the Father of Chinese History. He earned this accolade for his monumenta…
4 weeks, 2 days ago
Younus Y. Mirza, "The Islamic Mary: Maryam Through the Centuries" (Fortress Press, 2025)
Mary, the mother of Jesus, has been historically revered throughout the Islamic tradition. This began already in the Qur'an, where she is called by t…
4 weeks, 2 days ago
Michael R. Griffiths, "The Death of the Author and Anticolonial Thought" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025)
The Death of the Author and Anticolonial Thought (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025) promises to transform a decades old debate in literary studies about the…
4 weeks, 2 days ago
William Whyte, "The University: A History in Stone, Silk, and Blood" (Harvard UP, 2026)
We often idealize the university as a sanctuary for disinterested reason, where material concerns are set aside in favor of higher principles. Yet …
1 month ago