Context with Brad Harris

"Notes on Nationalism" was an essay written by George Orwell in 1945, just as World War II was ending. It caused quite a stir at the time, but most people these days have never heard of it. Nonetheless, "Notes on …

Like many others, I’ve begun to worry about the fate of higher education in American society.

Having spent most of my professional life in academia, my instinct is to regard the university system as sacred - as Wisdom’s …

In this episode, I invited the philosopher and author Stephen Hicks on the podcast to chat about his book, Explaining Postmodernism.  Stephen has been a Professor of Philosophy at Rockford University in Illinois for …

What’s that line attributed to Mark Twain?...

"History does not repeat itself, but it often rhymes."

As the authors Neil Howe and William Strauss wrote in their best-selling book The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy …

Plague, political upheaval, the looming prospect of another civil war... what century are we in?

To retain historical perspective, and to find …

I went slightly mad producing this episode. But then, the line between our reality and the fiction of 1984 has become far too blurry for my comfort.

George Orwell wrote 1984 in 1948 - a very different historical context …

"Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it."

Lately, it seems like our society is attempting to replace truth with power, forgetting that all other societies that have done this have failed miserably.

One of the …

It's hard to remember how intelligent humanity can be when we are relentlessly bombarded by bad news. Author and mathematician Steven Strogatz helps …

Carl Sagan was a brilliant popularizer of science.  His book, The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, helps to inspire clear …

There is an overlooked rule in history: far more is lost and forgotten than is preserved and remembered.

Humanity has made incredible progress - we …

Today, we explore the origin of the modern concept of a fact.

We take facts for granted, but they represent an invaluable intellectual technology …

Today I'm speaking with Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen, a historian from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. It would be hard to find a scholar better …

Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind, published in 1987, became one of the most influential books of the last 50 years by instigating a …

In this episode, we witness the debate that raged over the birth of what is perhaps the most powerful idea in history; the idea that supports our …

Niall Ferguson is one of the most influential historians of our generation. His professional effort extends well beyond academia to ensure that …

Niall Ferguson, perhaps the most famous historian of our generation, offers yet another breakthrough in his latest work, The Square and the Tower. Through groundbreaking research, Ferguson reveals how social networks, …

Is there a logic to history? 

Many scholars balk at the idea of searching for such logic, insisting that each culture may only be understood on its …

Today, I’m speaking with Bryan Ward-Perkins, author of The Fall of Rome, and the End of Civilization. 

It has become fashionable to argue that Roman …

The Two Cultures by C. P. Snow was one of the most influential lectures of the 20th century, triggering an intense epistemological debate within …

Merchants of Doubt is not just a book about how illusions of scientific controversy have been constructed, it’s also about the people who constructed them, and its most shocking revelation is that the very same people …

If civilization collapsed, and our descendants could rediscover a single work to get humanity back on track scientifically and technologically, Peter …

In this episode, we're shifting gears and I'll read an article that I published in 2013 in the journal American Scientist called "Evolution's Other …

The history of disease demonstrates both the accidental nature of history and the triumph of human reason that can enable us to gain some control …

In 1493, Charles Mann shows us how Europeans emerged at the center of a modern, globalized world by establishing the Columbian Exchange; a system …

Genghis Khan was so influential that, to understand how Europe began to shake off its medieval provincialism, how the Islamic world lost much of its …

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is a classic in the history of science, and one of the most cited books of the twentieth century. Thomas Kuhn …

Margaret Jacob’s book helps us understand how scientific knowledge became integrated into the culture of Europe through the 1600s and 1700s, and how …

The Wealth and Poverty of Nations was published by David Landes in 1998, and it has occupied a preeminent place on the bookshelves of scholars ever …

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies was published by Jared Diamond in 1997. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1998, along with several …