In the middle of the first world war, a group of artists, poets, and philosophers created an artistic and intellectual movement in response to the war.
While the movement itself didn’t last very long, its legacy of it laid the foundation for modern art in the 20th century, and can still be seen in modern art today.
Learn more about Dadaism, what it was, and ... Show More
Jun 18
Sodium: The Dangerous Yet Vital Element
Tell me your favorite episode for the 6th anniversary show!It is a metal that can explode in water, a part of a mineral that helped build empires, and an ion that allows your nerves to fire and your muscles to move. It has helped preserve food, shaped trade routes, powered indust ... Show More
15m 10s
Aug 2023
Episode #116: Modern Love--Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, Part 1
This season, I’m rounding up stories about modern artists in love, in lust, in relationships— digging into these individuals, see how their liaisons, marriages, affairs, and connections played in or on their respective works of art, and how, if anything, they affected art history ... Show More
32m 15s
Oct 2024
The speech that inspired the Law of the Sea
In November 1967, the Maltese diplomat, Arvid Pardo, addressed the United Nations with a remarkable speech that shaped the laws governing the sea.Pardo's message is immortalised in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which was adopted in 1982, and is now the fund ... Show More
9m 9s
Mar 2025
Fiction and the Fantastic: ‘Invisible Cities’ by Italo Calvino
Italo Calvino’s novella Invisible Cities is a hypnagogic reimagining of Marco Polo’s time in the court of Kublai Khan. Polo describes 55 impossible places – cities made of plumbing, free-floating, overwhelmed by rubbish, buried underground – that reveal something true about every ... Show More
16m 20s
Aug 2025
The Olmec: Mother of Mesoamerican Civilisations
Iconic monumental stone heads, the intriguing Lord of Las Limas, the enigmatic 'were-jaguar' figures, so much survives from the ancient Olmec civilisation.Tristan Hughes is joined by Dr. Jillian Mollenhauer to unravel the Olmec's sophisticated artistry, the symbolic significance ... Show More
1h 8m