In his new collection of wonderfully engaging and provocative set of essays on Darwin and Darwinians, Robert J. Richards explores the history of biology and so much more. The eight essays collected in Was Hitler a Darwinian?: Disputed Questions in the History of Evolutionary Theory (University of Chicago Press, 2013), include reflections on Darwin’s theorie ... Show More
Nov 20
Karen Auman, "The Good Forest: The Salzburgers, Success, and the Plan for Georgia" (U Georgia Press, 2024)
The Good Forest: The Salzburgers, Success, and the Plan for Georgia (U Georgia Press, 2024) explores some of Georgia’s earliest settlers, the Salzburgers.
Georgia, the last of Britain’s American mainland colonies, began with high aspirations to create a morally sound society ba ... Show More
50m 12s
Nov 9
Thomas Fleischman, "Communist Pigs: An Animal History of East Germany's Rise and Fall" (U Washington Press, 2020)
The pig played a fundamental role in the German Democratic Republic's attempts to create and sustain a modern, industrial food system built on communist principles. By the mid-1980s, East Germany produced more pork per capita than West Germany and the UK, while also suffering myr ... Show More
1 h
Oct 29
Jakub Gortat, "Remembering National Socialism in Austrian Post-war Film" (1945-1955) (Brill, 2025)
Entrenched in the myth of being victim of the Nazi aggression, Austrian elites pursued a politics of memory that symbolically shook off any responsibility for the emergence, development and consequences of National Socialism. Authors of the vast majority of films produced early a ... Show More
39m 37s
Mar 2024
Stefanos Geroulanos, "The Invention of Prehistory: Empire, Violence, and Our Obsession with Human Origins" (Liveright, 2024)
Books about the origins of humanity dominate bestseller lists, while national newspapers present breathless accounts of new archaeological findings and speculate about what those findings tell us about our earliest ancestors. We are obsessed with prehistory—and, in this respect, ... Show More
1h 14m
Jul 2023
Stephen Davies, "Adornment: What Self-Decoration Tells Us About Who We Are" (Bloomsbury, 2020)
Elaborating the history, variety, pervasiveness, and function of the adornments and ornaments with which we beautify ourselves, Stephen Davies's Adornment: What Self-Decoration Tells Us About Who We Are (Bloomsbury, 2020) takes in human prehistory, ancient civilizations, hunter-f ... Show More
31m 19s
Feb 2023
Bernard D. Geoghegan, "Code: From Information Theory to French Theory" (Duke UP, 2023)
Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan traces the shared intellectual and political history of computer scientists, cyberneticists, anthropologists, linguists, and theorists across the humanities as they developed a communication and computational-based theory that grasped culture and socie ... Show More
49m 44s
Dec 2024
Renée Bergland, "Natural Magic: Emily Dickinson, Charles Darwin, and the Dawn of Modern Science" (Princeton UP, 2024)
Emily Dickinson and Charles Darwin were born at a time when the science of studying the natural world was known as natural philosophy, a pastime for poets, priests, and schoolgirls. The world began to change in the 1830s, while Darwin was exploring the Pacific aboard the Beagle a ... Show More
1h 3m
Sep 2024
Ep483 - Robert Greene | Mastery
Robert Greene visits Google to discuss his latest book, "Mastery." What did Charles Darwin, a middling schoolboy and underachieving second son, do to become one of the earliest and greatest naturalists the world has known? What were the similar choices made by Mozart and by Caesa ... Show More
1h 1m
Sep 2023
Shai M. Dromi and Samuel D. Stabler, "Moral Minefields: How Sociologists Debate Good Science" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
Where does morality fit into contemporary social science? In Moral Minefields: How Sociologists Debate Good Science (U Chicago Press, 2023), Shai Dromi, an Associate Senior Lecturer at the Department of Sociology at Harvard University and Samuel Stabler Associate Teaching Profes ... Show More
50m 32s
Aug 2023
Wendy A. Woloson, "Crap: A History of Cheap Stuff in America" (U Chicago Press, 2020)
Why are our lives filled with so much stuff? In Crap: A History of Cheap Stuff in America (U Chicago Press, 2023), Wendy Woloson, Professor and Chair in the Department of History at Rutgers University, tells the history of these objects and things, from the early years of peddler ... Show More
44m 16s
Feb 2024
Class 2: The Heritage of the Enlightenment
“Our Western heritage is reason—reason, analysis, action, progress!” –Settembrini the organ-grinder in Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain. HIST 271/HUMS 339: European Intellectual History since Nietzsche is a survey course designed to introduce students to the dominant trends in mo ... Show More
47m 7s