Conversations with Tyler | 11 January 2023 | 0h 53m | Listen Later |
Podcasts | Spotify
Interview with Katherine Rundell about her book Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne. Discusses how she became obsessed with John Donne, the power of memorizing poetry, the political implications of suicide in the 17th century, the new evidence of Donne’s faith, the contagious intensity of thought in 17th-century British life, the effect of the plague on the national consciousness, the brutality of boys’ schooling, and more.
Category: Culture
Restoring Dynamism in a Decadent Society with Ross Douthat
Venture Stories | 29 September 2022 | 0h 51m | Listen Later |
Podcasts | Spotify
Interview with Ross Douthat about his book The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success. Sets out the evidence for stagnation, argues that we need a renaissance to get ourselves out of the age of decadence, and considers what of his arguments have endured in the three years since publication.
Katherine Rundell on Super-Infinite
Baillie Gifford Prize | 25 October 2022 | 0h 33m | Listen Later |
Podcasts | Spotify
Interview with Katherine Rundell about her book Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne. Discusses the life and poetry of John Donne. Rundell won the 2022 Ballie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction for this book.
Douglas Murray on The War on the West: Race, Politics, and Culture
The Michael Shermer Show | 3 May 2022 | 0h 59m | Listen Later |
Podcasts | Spotify
Interview with Douglas Murray about his book The War on the West. Argues that many well-meaning people have been fooled by hypocritical and inconsistent anti-West rhetoric. Discusses whether at least some of the criticisms of Western civilization are a corrective to past wrongs, critical race theory and racism, colonialism and decolonizing cultural things, anti-Semitism, objectivity and the search for truth, and reparations.
Frans de Waal on Culture and Gender in Primates
Sean Carroll’s Mindscape | 25 April 2022 | 1h 08m | Listen Later |
Podcasts | Spotify
Interview with Frans de Waal about his book Different: Gender Through the Eyes of a Primatologist. Discusses culture, gender and sexuality in non-human primates.
How Chinese Language is the Core of its Culture: A Conversation with Jing Tsu
Talk Cocktail | 4 February 2022 | 0h 22m | Listen Later |
Podcasts | Spotify
Interview with Jing Tsu about her book Kingdom of Characters: The Language Revolution That Made China Modern. Describes how the Chinese language has been reinvented, iterated and adapted to the modern world of global trade and digital technology.
Chad Orzel: A Brief History of Timekeeping
Razib Khan’s Unsupervised Learning | 4 February 2022 | 0h 54m | Listen Later |
Podcasts | Spotify
Interview with Chad Orzel about his book A Brief History of Timekeeping. Discusses cultural, engineering, historical and archaeological aspects of timekeeping; astronomical calendars; water clocks; how Greenwich Mean Time emerged; the cultural changes wrought by standardised time; and the effects of relativity and gravity on time.
Razib’s Substack is a joy to read.
Oliver Roeder on the Enduring Appeal of Chess and Other Games
Perpetual Chess Podcast | 25 January 2022 | 1h 08m | Listen Later | iTunes | Spotify
Interview with Oliver Roeder about his book Seven Games, a Human History. Backgrounds the history and current competitive contexts of Checkers, Chess, Backgammon, Go, Poker, Scrabble, and Bridge. Discusses why people love games, why people love chess, the methods and costs of achieving high proficiency in Scrabble, and how AI is changing games.