Podcast American Classicist November 03, 2023 Edith Hamilton (1867–1963) didn’t publish her first book until she was sixty-two. But over the next three decades, this former headmistress would become the twentieth century’s most famous interpreter of the classical world. Read More
Podcast Free Agents October 11, 2023 Scientists are learning more and more about how brain activity controls behavior and how neural circuits weigh alternatives and initiate actions. As we probe ever deeper into the mechanics of decision making, many conclude that agency—or free will—is an illusion. Read More
Podcast To Build a Black Future October 10, 2023 When #BlackLivesMatter emerged in 2013, it animated the most consequential Black-led mobilization since the civil rights and Black power era. Today, the hashtag turned rallying cry is but one expression of a radical reorientation toward Black politics, protest, and political thought. Read More
Podcast Fool: In Search of Henry VIII’s Closest Man September 28, 2023 In some portraits of Henry VIII there appears another, striking figure—a gaunt and morose-looking man with a shaved head and, in one case, a monkey on his shoulder. Read More
Podcast How Uber disrupted Washington, D.C. September 11, 2023 The first city to fight back against Uber, Washington, D.C., was also the first city where such resistance was defeated. It was here that the company created a playbook for how to deal with intransigent regulators and to win in the realm of local politics. Read More
Podcast 24/7 Politics September 07, 2023 As television began to overtake the political landscape in the 1960s, network broadcast companies, bolstered by powerful lobbying interests, dominated screens across the nation. Read More
Podcast In Praise of Good Bookstores September 07, 2023 Jeff Deutsch—the director of Chicago’s Seminary Co-op Bookstores, one of the finest bookstores in the world—pays loving tribute to one of our most important and endangered civic institutions. Read More
Podcast Virtuous Bankers August 07, 2023 The eighteenth-century Bank of England was an institution that operated for the benefit of its shareholders—and yet came to be considered, as Adam Smith described it, “a great engine of state.” Read More
Podcast Pleasure and Efficacy July 30, 2023 Grace Lavery investigates gender transition as it has been experienced and represented in the modern period. Considering examples that range from the novels of George Eliot to the psychoanalytic practice of Sigmund Freud to marriage manuals by Marie Stopes, Lavery explores the skepticism found in such works about whether it is truly possible to change one’s sex. Read More
Podcast Night Vision June 08, 2023 Under the light of ancient Western philosophies, our darker moods like grief, anguish, and depression can seem irrational. When viewed through the lens of modern psychology, they can even look like mental disorders. Read More
Podcast Period: The Real Story of Menstruation May 31, 2023 Menstruation is something half the world does for a week at a time, for months and years on end, yet it remains largely misunderstood. Read More
Podcast Parfit: A Philosopher and His Mission to Save Morality May 09, 2023 Derek Parfit (1942–2017) is the most famous philosopher most people have never heard of. Widely regarded as one of the greatest moral thinkers of the past hundred years, Parfit was anything but a public intellectual. Read More
Podcast When Eero Met His Match May 04, 2023 Aline B. Louchheim (1914–1972) was an art critic on assignment for the New York Times in 1953 when she first met the Finnish-American architect Eero Saarinen. She would become his wife and the driving force behind his rise to critical prominence. Read More
Podcast Please make me pretty, I don’t want to die April 30, 2023 Please make me pretty, I don’t want to die explores tactility, sound, sensuality, and intimacy. Set across the four seasons of a year, these fresh and original poems by Tawanda Mulalu combine an inviting confessional voice and offbeat imagery, and offer an appealing mixture of seriousness and humor. Read More
Podcast Gods and Mortals March 28, 2023 Gripping tales that abound with fantastic characters and astonishing twists and turns, Greek myths confront what it means to be mortal in a world of powerful forces beyond human control. Read More
