Are Indiana Jones and Lara Croft real archaeologists? Brian Fagan takes us through the history of archaeology from the early treasure hunting days to the rigorously scientific present. Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Soundcloud
Terry Eagleton— Over half a century ago, in an excellent little book entitled Communications, Raymond Williams outlined a socialist plan for the arts and media which rejected state control of its content on the one hand and the sovereignty of the profit motive on the other. Instead, the active contributors
Louis Barthas; Translated by Edward M. Strauss— In March 1918, after more than forty months on the front lines, under daily threat of violent death, disease, or dismemberment, French infantry corporal Louis Barthas succumbs to exhaustion and earns an evacuation order from a cynical, reluctant medical officer. He’s shunted out
Baseball is America’s Pastime but can it survive in the technological era when games are longer than most attention spans? Susan Jacoby, author and longtime baseball fan, discusses the history of the game and what it can do to keep fans engaged. Subscribe: iTunes | Stitcher | Soundcloud
Joe Moran— Unlike Scandinavians or Southeast Asians, Americans have no carefully calibrated language for describing different kinds of embarrassment. They have a reputation for seeing shyness as unAmerican. Their cultural heroes are seemingly self-sufficient, outdoorsy types: pioneers, backwoodsmen, cowboys, baseball players—men living what Theodore Roosevelt called “the strenuous life.” But
Molly Haskell— Bridge of Spies, Spielberg’s 2015 Cold War thriller and Academy Award nominee, is based on the exchange of prisoners following the 1960 U-2 incident. Full of meticulous period details, with dark rain-slick streets, reliably beautiful in the silver, blue-gray tones of Janusz Kaminski’s cinematography, the movie, like so
Hasia R. Diner— Balancing the choices open to them—staying put; going to a big city in Europe, the Ottoman Empire, or North Africa; or emigrating to the new world— consumed the Jews in the old one. Joseph Austrian was born in 1833 in a small village, Wittelshoffen in Bavaria. His
Joseph Turow— It’s said that a frog placed in a boiling pot of water will escape, but if the water is slowly heated the frog will habituate and eventually die. Although scientists dispute the accuracy of this statement, no one in the audience of marketers objected—or even said it was
Charles M. Peters— The traditional method of farming used throughout the tropics is called shifting cultivation, roza, tumba y quema, or slash and burn agriculture. A small plot of forest is felled and burned, and corn, rice, cassava, or a variety of other crops are planted in the ash. These
Stephen Batchelor— Taking photographs and practicing meditation might seem at first glance to be unrelated activities. For while photography looks outward at the visual world through the medium of a camera, meditation focuses inward on unmediated experience. And whereas photography is concerned with producing images of reality, meditation is about