Yesterday
Jennifer Vail, "Friction: A Biography" (Harvard UP, 2026)
Friction, the force that resists motion, is synonymous with difficulty and complication. If you’ve ever replaced tires worn smooth by the road or reached for a can of WD-40 to fix a creaking door hinge, then you know the headache this force can cause. In Friction: a Biography (Ha ... Show More
34m 22s
Feb 1
Andreas Killen, "Nervous Systems: Brain Science in the Early Cold War" (Harper, 2023)
In this eye-opening chronicle of scientific research on the brain in the early Cold War era, the acclaimed historian Andreas Killen traces the complex circumstances surrounding the genesis of our present-day fascination with this organ.
The 1950s were a transformative, even revol ... Show More
53m 20s
Jan 31
John L. Rudolph, "Why We Teach Science (and Why We Should)" (Oxford UP, 2023)
Today I talked to John L. Rudolph about his book Why We Teach Science (and Why We Should) (Oxford UP, 2023). Few people question the importance of science education in American schooling. The public readily accepts that it is the key to economic growth through innovation, develop ... Show More
36m 54s
Jul 2012
John Burnham, “After Freud Left: A Century of Psychoanalysis in America” (University of Chicago Press, 2012)
Perhaps most of us interested in psychoanalysis in the United States have the idea that, in 1909, when Freud lectured at Clark University, his first and only visit to this country, the profession was launched. That Freud was perhaps an afterthought to a larger celebration at the ... Show More
56m 43s
Jul 2020
RU97: RENDERING DR KEVIN VOLKAN UNCONSCIOUS, PSYCHOANALYSIS, EDUCATION, MUSIC, WRITING, CLINIC WORK
Dr. Kevin Volkan is a founding faculty member and Professor of Psychology at California State University Channel Islands, where he researches and teaches courses in psychopathology and atypical behaviors, personality theory, as well as Nazi Germany, and Eastern philosophy. He als ... Show More
1h 14m
Jun 2019
Eleonor Gilburd, "To See Paris and Die: The Soviet Lives of Western Culture" (Harvard UP, 2018)
Josef Stalin’s death in 1953 marked a noticeable shift in Soviet attitudes towards the West. A nation weary of war and terror welcomed with relief the new regime of Nikita Khrushchev and its focus on peaceful cooperation with foreign powers. A year after Stalin’s death, author ... Show More
1h 27m
Nov 2021
The Devils: Dostoevsky’s novel of political evil
The Devils, The Possessed, or Demons, as it’s also known in translation, is Fyodor Dostoevsky’s most political novel but it’s also his bleakest and funniest. It’s a hundred and fifty years since its publication and two hundred years since its author’s birth. The novel tells the s ... Show More
40m 4s
In her new book, State of Madness: Psychiatry, Literature and Dissent After Stalin (Northern Illinois University Press, 2018), Rebecca Reich argues that Soviet dissident writers used literary narratives to counter state-sanctioned psychiatric diagnoses of insanity. Reich discusses the interesting literary preoccupations of Soviet psychiatrists and psychiatri ... Show More
