Ep. 10 – The Winchester Family’s Role in American History
Laura Trevelyan, journalist and author of The Winchester, discusses the history of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company and the story of the family behind the famous name.
Theories of Liberation
Michael Walzer— National liberation is an ambitious and also, from the beginning, an ambiguous project. The nation has to be liberated not only from external oppressors—in a way, that’s the easy part—but also from the internal effects of external oppression. Albert Memmi, the Tunisian Jew who wrote perceptively about the
The Ever-Evolving Battle for Syria
Christopher Phillips— The acrimonious breakdown of the latest Syrian ceasefire and the renewed assault on Eastern Aleppo serve as reminders that Syria’s highly internationalized civil war seems unlikely to be resolved any time soon. The conflict originated in a largely peaceful uprising against President Bashar al-Assad that turned violent in
How Small Farms Continue to Struggle in the Organic Food Industry
Connor J. Fitzmaurice & Brian J. Gareau— It’s fall in New England, and in the region’s many farmers’ markets, mountains of corn and heirloom tomatoes have given way to bountiful displays of pumpkins, apples, cabbages, cranberries, and leafy greens. It’s a relief for many. This summer’s harvest was a lean
Bound Together by Law
Jessica M. Marglin— Terrorism; attacks on a kosher supermarket in Paris; fights over who can pray on the Temple Mount, known in Arabic as the Haram al-Sharif. When we juxtapose Jews and Muslims today, these are the sorts of associations that usually come to mind. The conflict in Israel/Palestine, and
Arthur Johnson’s Life in Solitary Confinement
Keramet Reiter— Arthur Johnson, sixty-four, has spent thirty-seven years in solitary confinement, locked in a cell no bigger than a wheelchair-accessible bathroom stall. He is living his fourth decade without once having shared a meal—or even a handshake—with another human being. Astonishingly, Johnson has committed only three extraordinarily minor disciplinary violations
The Artful Religion of William Blake
Leo Damrosch— Religion was profoundly important to Blake, in a questing and questioning way that is thought-provoking even for readers and viewers who are not religious at all. One of his first experiments in relief etching was a little pamphlet entitled All Religions Are One, which asserts that however much
Ep. 9 – The Science of Human Evolution
How have humans evolved and what drives this evolution? Evolutionary biologist Scott Solomon, author of Future Humans, discusses the science of human evolution.
Catholic Anxiety and Jewish Protest in the Age of Revolutions
Kenneth Stow— In 1749, a young Jewish girl of Rome, the eighteen-year-old Anna del Monte, was kidnapped and taken to the Catecumeni, the Roman House of Converts. She had been accused of expressing a desire to convert to Catholicism by one Sabato Cohen, who had himself converted in the hopes of
A Conversation with Leo Braudy: Embodiments of Fear in Books, Films, Religion, and More
Yale University Press had the pleasure of interviewing Leo Braudy, author of the forthcoming Haunted: On Ghosts, Witches, Vampires, Zombies, and Other Monsters of the Natural and Supernatural Worlds. Braudy, a finalist for both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, is also the author of The Frenzy