Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchKirin Narayan, "Cave of My Ancestors: Vishwakarma and the Artisans of Ellora" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
Episode 575
On the podcast today I am joined by Kirin Narayan, emerita professor at the College of Asia and the Pacific at the Australian National University. Ki…
6 months, 2 weeks ago
Lizzie Wade, "Apocalypse: How Catastrophe Transformed Our World and Can Forge New Futures" (Harper, 2025)
Episode 373
A richly imagined new view on the great human tradition of apocalypse, from the rise of Homo sapiens to the climate instability of our present, that …
6 months, 3 weeks ago
Graham Harman and Christopher Witmore, "Objects Untimely: Object-Oriented Philosophy and Archaeology" (Polity Press, 2023)
Episode 17
Objects generate time; time does not generate or change objects. That is the central thesis of this book by the philosopher Graham Harman and the arc…
7 months, 2 weeks ago
J. P. Mallory, "The Indo-Europeans Rediscovered: How a Scientific Revolution Is Rewriting Their Story" (Thames & Hudson, 2025)
Today the number of native speakers of Indo-European languages across the world is approximated to be over 2.6 billion—about 45 percent of the Earth’…
8 months ago
Emily Hauser, "Penelope’s Bones: A New History of Homer’s World through the Women Written Out of It" (Univ of Chicago Press, 2025)
Achilles. Agamemnon. Odysseus. Hector. The lives of these and many other men in the greatest epics of ancient Greece have been pored over endlessly i…
8 months, 1 week ago
Andrew Smith, "First People: The Lost History of the Khoisan" (Jonathan Ball, 2022)
First people communities are the early groups of hunter gatherers, herders, and the oldest human lineages of Africa, some migrating from as far as Ea…
8 months, 3 weeks ago
Robert Garland, "What to Expect When You're Dead: An Ancient Tour of Death and the Afterlife" (Princeton UP, 2025)
A lively story of death, What to Expect When You're Dead: An Ancient Tour of Death and the Afterlife (Princeton University Press, 2025) by Dr. Robert…
8 months, 3 weeks ago
Richard D. Oram, "A Land Won from Waste: Scotland AD 400-1400" (Birlinn, 2025)
Drawing together the evidence of archaeology, palaeoecology, climate history and the historical record, this first environmental history of Scotland …
9 months ago
Annalisa Marzano, "Plants, Politics and Empire in Ancient Rome" (Cambridge UP. 2022)
Episode 48
Plants, Politics and Empire in Ancient Rome (Cambridge University Press, 2022) by Dr. Annalisa Marzano investigates the cultural and political dimens…
10 months ago
Stolen Fragments: Black Markets, Bad Faith, and the Illicit Trade in Ancient Artefacts
Episode 262
In 2012, Steve Green, billionaire and president of the Hobby Lobby chain of craft stores, announced a recent purchase of a Biblical artefact—a fragme…
10 months, 1 week ago