This episode proved remarkably popular, so we're reposting it as an NBN classic for those who missed it the first time.
It is no easy task to survey and present a comprehensive history of philosophy of an entire intellectual tradition to a broad public audience without compromising on the scholarly rigor demanded by that history’s nuances. In an ambitious en ... Show More
Today
Craig Perry, "Slavery and the Jews of Medieval Egypt: A History" (Princeton UP, 2026)
Slavery was a key part of pre-modern Islamic society, spanning from soldiers to concubines. And one of the most revealing repositories of evidence we have for how slavery worked in practice comes from the Cairo Geniza, a cache of hundreds of thousands of discarded documents from ... Show More
47m 11s
Apr 21
James Bultema, "Free Enough to Grow: The Turkish Protestant Movement, 1961-2016" (Springer, 2026)
In Free Enough to Grow: The Turkish Protestant Movement, 1961-2016 (Springer Nature, 2026), James Bultema identifies and investigates four central factors that gave rise to the Turkish Protestant movement in the latter half of the twentieth century and the early years of the twen ... Show More
1 h
Apr 19
Nathaniel Greenberg, "The Long War of Ideas: American Public Diplomacy in Arabic After 9/11" (Columbia UP, 2026)
In the wake of the September 11 attacks, US officials identified the so-called battle for hearts and minds as the “second front” in the war on terror. A wave of funding flowed into public diplomacy in the Middle East, seeking to change views of the United States through Arabic-la ... Show More
48m 38s
Apr 2023
A. Azfar Moin and Alan Strathern, "Sacred Kingship in World History: Between Immanence and Transcendence" (Columbia UP, 2022)
Sacred kingship has been the core political form, in small-scale societies and in vast empires, for much of world history. Sacred Kingship in World History: Between Immanence and Transcendence (Columbia UP, 2022) recasts the relationship between religion and politics by exploring ... Show More
46m 36s
Oct 2023
Ibn Arabi's Pluralistic Vision in a World of Exclusivism
The philosophical concepts at the heart of this presentation include Wujud, the Plural, and Ambiguity. I begin by examining Ibn Arabi's notion of belief as 'tying knots in the heart,' parallel to his understanding of the nature of Wujud and Barzakh. The aim is a fresh thinking ab ... Show More
27m 30s
May 2024
Sari Nusseibeh, "Avicenna's Al-Shifā': Oriental Philosophy" (Routledge, 2018)
Sari Nusseibeh's book Avicenna's Al-Shifā': Oriental Philosophy (Routledge, 2018) deals with the philosophy of Ibn Sina - Avicenna as he was known in the Latin West- a Persian Muslim who lived in the eleventh century, considered one of the most important figures in the history of ... Show More
1h 3m