Apr 3

Beth Derderian, "Art Capital: Museum Politics and the Making of the Louvre Abu Dhabi" (Stanford UP, 2026)

Museums often served nationalist and imperialist interests in the past, but the primary force in the 21st century is the market. Museum franchising—exemplified by the Louvre Abu Dhabi—is one of the most visible cases of the increasing entanglement of art and museums with capital ... Show More

31m 19s

Mar 29

Michael Allan, "Cinema before the World: The Global Routes of the Lumière Brothers" (Fordham UP, 2026)

Cinema Before the World: The Global Routes of the Lumière Brothers (Fordham UP, 2026) investigates the transnational origins of filmmaking by focusing on a case study in world cinema—the 1896-1897 voyage of one of the Lumière Brothers camera operators, Alexandre Promio, across No ... Show More

35m 56s

Mar 28

On Our Continuing Age of Oil with Journalist Stanley Reed

Stanley Reed has been covering energy and the Middle East from London for more than three decades, most recently for The New York Times. With the war in Iran and its threat to global energy supplies as backdrop, we have a wide-ranging conversation about the Age of Oil. Despite l ... Show More

46m 57s

Aug 2025

Nabil Yasien Mohamed, "Ghazālī’s Epistemology: A Critical Study of Doubt and Certainty" (Routledge, 2024)

Focusing on Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī (d. 1111) – one of the foremost scholars and authorities in the Muslim world who is central to the Islamic intellectual tradition – this book embarks on a study of doubt (shakk) and certainty (yaqīn) in his epistemology. Ghazālī’s Epistemology: A ... Show More

1h 20m

May 2024

Exploring Qāsim Nānotwī's Engagement with the Akbarian Tradition: Interpreting Waḥdat al-Wujūd by Shazad Khan

<p>This paper proposes to delve into the profound legacy of the Akbarian tradition, an intellectual tradition rooted in the works of Ibn ʿArabī, which extensively contemplates the central doctrine of tawḥīd (the oneness of God) and has exerted a lasting influence on subsequent Is ... Show More

18m 52s

Jan 2024

83: Baruch Spinoza’s Geometric Faith

In the tradition of the great theistic philosophers, Baruch Spinoza presents us with a metaphysical vision of the cosmos, as ordered by God. But in sharp contrast with thinkers such as Pascal, Spinoza's arguments for God are crafted with an attempt of logical precision. In fact, ... Show More

1h 46m

Sep 2025

The 1,000-year Legacy of Ibn Sina

<p>Known as the “Father of Modern Medicine,” Ibn Sina was a Persian polymath whose writings transformed science, philosophy, and ethics. In this episode, Roy traces the turbulent world Ibn Sina lived in, the intellectual traditions that shaped him, and the groundbreaking discover ... Show More

59m 42s

Oct 2024

S2 Ep 3: Al Kindi, The Father of Arab Philosophy with Peter Adamson

Al Kindi, The Father of Arab Philosophy Great to see you for our third episode, which features Peter Adamson, Professor of Philosophy at the LMU in Munich and at King's College London. The way the story of philosophy has been presented is that it started with the ancient Greeks, ... Show More

1 h

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

Feb 2024

Class 13: French Existentialism

“Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself.”—Jean-Paul Sartre, “Existentialism is a Humanism.” HIST 271/HUMS 339: European Intellectual History since Nietzsche is a survey course designed to introduce students to the dominant trends in modern European intellectual hi ... Show More

51m 33s

Aug 2024

Ludovico Silva, "Marx's Literary Style" (Verso, 2023)

In Marx’s Literary Style, the Venezuelan poet and philosopher Ludovico Silva argues that much of the confusion around Marx’s work results from a failure to understand his literary mode of expression. Through meticulous readings of key passages in Marx’s oeuvre, Silva isolates the ... Show More

1h 6m

Nov 2023

Konstantinos Retsikas, "A Synthesis of Time: Zakat, Islamic Micro-finance and the Question of the Future in 21st-Century Indonesia" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020)

In A Synthesis of Time: Zakat, Islamic Micro-finance and the Question of the Future in 21st-Century Indonesia (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), Konstantinos Retsikas has anthropological investigation into the different forms the economy assumes, and the different purposes it serves, wh ... Show More

1h 4m

Jan 2025

The Nature of All Things: Spinoza's Philosophical Odyssey

Professor of philosophy Colin Bodayle joins Breht to dive into the profound, unique, and almost mystical philosophy of Baruch Spinoza. Together, they discuss the value of philosophy for all of us, Spinoza as a "philosopher's philosopher", his life and death in 17th century wester ... Show More

2h 43m

Sari Nusseibeh, "Avicenna's Al-Shifā': O...