Podcast Episodes

Legacy of the Ancient Greeks: On Classical and Modern Democracy with Josiah Ober

American democracy is in a period of crisis, so it seems natural to look back to its origins. So here in Episode 10 of Season 5, I interview Professo…

2 months, 3 weeks ago

Marinus De Jong, "A Church for a Secular World: The Development of Klaas Schilder's Ecclesiology" (Brill, 2025)

The relationship between the Church and the world has been a subject of debate since the Church's earliest days. In A Church for a Secular World: The…

2 months, 4 weeks ago

Pamela Walker Laird, "Self-Made: The Stories that Forged an American Myth" (Cambridge University Press, 2025)

"Self-Made" success is now an American badge of honor that rewards individualist ambitions while it hammers against community obligations. Yet, four …

2 months, 4 weeks ago

Curtis Dozier, "The White Pedestal: How White Nationalists Use Ancient Greece and Rome to Justify Hate" (Yale UP, 2026)

Curtis Dozier's The White Pedestal: How White Nationalists Use Ancient Greece and Rome to Justify Hate (Yale University Press, 2026) explores how w…

2 months, 4 weeks ago

Manasicha Akepiyapornchai, "Surrender to God Across Languages: Multilingual Intellectual History of Premodern India" (Oxford UP, 2026)

Surrender to God Across Languages: Multilingual Intellectual History of Premodern India (Oxford UP, 2026) explores the role of languages in the intel…

3 months ago

Arlene W. Saxonhouse, "Athenian Democracy: Modern Mythmakers and Ancient Theorists" (U Notre Dame Press, 2026)

Athenian Democracy provides innovative readings of ancient theorists to reveal both the complexity of democracy's achievements and its limits.

In Ath…

3 months ago

Natalia Rogach Alexander, "Growing People: The Enduring Legacy of John Dewey" (Columbia UP, 2025)

John Dewey is among history’s most celebrated thinkers on democracy and education, yet he has often been underappreciated and misunderstood as a phi…

3 months ago

Joanna Stalnaker, "The Rest Is Silence: Enlightenment Philosophers Facing Death" (Yale UP, 2025)

What would the Enlightenment look like if we viewed it through the eyes of the philosophers as they were facing death? Joanna Stalnaker turns our usu…

3 months ago

Susanna Drake, "Veiling in the Late Antique World" (Cambridge UP, 2026)

Veiling meant many things to the ancients. On women, veils could signify virtue, beauty, piety, self-control, and status. On men, covering the head c…

3 months ago

Stephen C.E. Hopkins, "⁠Translating hell: Vernacular theology and apocrypha in the medieval North Sea"⁠ (Manchester UP, 2026)

In the Middle Ages, hell was useful because it was vaguely defined. Canonical scriptures scarcely mention hell, leaving much to the imaginations of …

3 months ago