Zakaria discusses “Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World,” and Margaret MacMillan talks about “War: How Conflict Shaped Us.”
Nov 14
Nicholas Boggs on Writing a James Baldwin Biography
<p>Nicholas Boggs’s “Baldwin: A Love Story,” is many things at once. It’s a comprehensive biography of James Baldwin. It’s a nimble excavation of Baldwin’s work, filled with astute literary analysis of his books and prose. And, most pressingly, it’s an argument for a new critical ... Show More
36m 28s
Nov 7
The Sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald, 50 Years Later
<p>On Nov. 10, 1975, during a calamitous storm, the Edmund Fitzgerald sunk below the waves of Lake Superior. All 29 men aboard went down with the vessel. With no survivors and no eyewitnesses, there’s always been a sense of mystery to what is arguably the most famous shipwreck in ... Show More
39m 33s
Apr 2021
Bing West, "The Last Platoon: A Novel of the Afghanistan War" (Bombardier Books, 2020)
The Last Platoon: A Novel of the Afghanistan War (Bombardier Books, 2020) is a riveting book of infantry ground combat. As a work of fiction it is superb, showing the personal drama, drives and experiences of regular Marines combined with the high ambitions and political maneuver ... Show More
53m 54s
Jun 2022
The Black Death | 6. how the pandemic transformed societies
In the final episode of our series on the Black Death, Professor Mark Bailey and Dr Claire Kennan discuss the medieval pandemic’s dramatic social, political and economic impact. Speaking to Ellie Cawthorne, they use England as a case study to explore how it restructured society, ... Show More
43m 37s
Nov 2020
S3 Ep5: History of Pandemics: Smallpox, and Jenner
Welcome to the eighteenth century, at a point when Europe is going through another major smallpox outbreak, a disease that by this point has been plaguing populations around the globe for centuries. Peter will discover why milkmaids may be to central to the story of vaccination, ... Show More
43m 22s
Feb 2024
"The Better Angels of Our Nature" Part 1: You're Not Wrong, Pinker. You're Just An *sshole
<p>This week we're tackling Steven Pinker's 900 page dissection of the reasons why violence, torture and war have declined over the last 10,000 years. Was it an indeterminate mixture of politics, economics, technology and serendipity? Or did some European guys write so ... Show More
1h 37m