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Intellectual History
High Theory April 1, 2022

Welcome to High Theory!

Kim Adams and Soronik Bosu

Hosted by Kim Adams and Saronik Bosu
Welcome to High Theory! High Theory is a podcast in which we get high on the substance of theory. And we ask the three standard questions, to each other, and …

Intellectual History

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Interviews with intellectual historians about their new books.

Islamic Studies May 27, 2022

Sorcery or Science?

Contesting Knowledge and Practice in West African Sufi Texts

Ariela Marcus-Sells

Hosted by Shobhana Xavier
In Sorcery or Science? Contesting Knowledge and Practice in West African Sufi Texts (The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2022) Ariela Marcus-Sells examines two Sufi Muslim theologians, known as Kunta scholars …
Asian Review of Books May 26, 2022

China Through European Eyes: 800 Years of Cultural and Intellectual Encounter

Kerry Brown and Gemma Chenger Deng

Hosted by Nicholas Gordon
Europeans have been writing about China for centuries–ever since The Travels of Marco Polo described it as a faraway and mystical kingdom. European thinkers like Voltaire and Montesquieu used China …
Literary Studies May 26, 2022

Song of Ourselves

Walt Whitman and the Fight for Democracy

Mark Edmundson

Hosted by Jon Najarian
Walt Whitman knew a great deal about democracy that we don’t. Most of that knowledge is concentrated in one stunning poem, Song of Myself. In Song of Ourselves: Walt Whitman and …
French Studies May 26, 2022

The Anthropological Turn

French Political Thought After 1968

Jacob Collins

Hosted by Roxanne Panchasi
Jacob Collins's The Anthropological Turn: French Political Through After 1968 (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020) examines some of the most important currents in French intellectual life through the 1970s. In the …
Jewish Studies May 24, 2022

Becoming Elijah

Prophet of Transformation

Daniel C. Matt

Hosted by Michael Morales
Elijah is a zealous prophet, attacking idolatry and injustice, championing God. He performs miracles, restoring life and calling down fire. When his earthly life ends, he vanishes in a whirlwind …
Irish Studies May 24, 2022

Irish Writers and the Thirties

Art, Exile and War

Katrina Goldstone

Hosted by Bridget English
The theme of exile in Irish writing often calls to mind Joyce or Beckett, but rarely does it conjure up other writers or literary networks, particularly those of the often-overlooked …
On Religion May 24, 2022

On Gurdjieff

A Discussion with Roger Lipsey

Roger Lipsey

Hosted by Gregory Soden
Roger Lipsey is a biographer, art historian, translator, and, for many decades, a participant in the Gurdjieff teaching. Among his recent books is Hammarskjöld: A Life, which has been hailed as …
General History May 23, 2022

The Lost Promise

American Universities in the 1960s

Ellen Schrecker

Hosted by Catriona Gold
The Lost Promise: American Universities in the 1960s (University of Chicago Press, 2021) is a magisterial examination of the turmoil that rocked American universities in the 1960s, with a unique focus on the …
Military History May 23, 2022

Maladies of Empire

How Colonialism, Slavery, and War Transformed Medicine

Jim Downs

Hosted by Galina Limorenko
Most stories of medical progress come with ready-made heroes. John Snow traced the origins of London's 1854 cholera outbreak to a water pump, leading to the birth of epidemiology. Florence …
On Religion May 23, 2022

Neuromatic

Or, a Particular History of Religion and the Brain

John Lardas Modern

Hosted by Alison Renna
In Neuromatic: Or, a Particular History of Religion and the Brain (U Chicago Press, 2021), religious studies scholar John Lardas Modern offers a sprawling examination of the history of the …
High Theory May 20, 2022

Military Industrial Complex

A Discussion with Patrick Deer

Patrick Deer

Hosted by Kim Adams and Saronik Bosu
Kim talks to Patrick Deer about the Military Industrial Complex, a term used by US President Dwight D. Eisenhower in a 1961 speech to describe a permanent war economy, and …
Eastern European Studies May 20, 2022

In the Labyrinth of the KGB

Ukraine's Intelligentsia in the 1960s–1970s

Olga Bertelsen

Hosted by Anna Bisikalo
Olga Bertelsen’s timely book, In the Labyrinth of the KGB: Ukraine’s Intelligentsia in the 1960s-1970s (Lexington Books, 2022), focuses on the generation of the sixties and seventies in Kharkiv, Soviet …
The Imperfect Buddha Podcast May 20, 2022

Peter Salmon on Jacques Derrida and the Buddha

A Conversation with Peter Salmon

Hosted by Matthew O'Connell
Today I talk with Peter Salmon, author of An Event, Perhaps; an intellectual biography of Jacques Derrida. Our conversation was rich: We tackle Derrida and Buddhism, Derrida and the culture …
Critical Theory May 19, 2022

Universality and Identity Politics

Todd McGowan

Hosted by Reuben Niewenhuis
The great political ideas and movements of the modern world were founded on a promise of universal emancipation. But in recent decades, much of the Left has grown suspicious of …
Intellectual History May 19, 2022

The Belief in Intuition

Individuality and Authority in Henri Bergson and Max Scheler

Adriana Alfaro Altamirano

Hosted by August Baker
Within the Western tradition, it was the philosophers Henri Bergson and Max Scheler who laid out and explored the nonrational power of "intuition" at work in human beings that plays …
High Theory May 18, 2022

Alienation

A Discussion with Mustafa Yavas

Mustafa Yavas

Hosted by Kim Adams and Saronik Bosu
In this episode Kim talks with Mustafa Yavas about Alienation. Mustafa quotes Karl Marx’s Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844. He also references Albert Camus’ books The Stranger and The …
Grinnell College: Authors and Artists May 17, 2022

Collecting Lives

Critical Data Narrative as Modernist Aesthetic in Early Twentieth-Century Us Literatures

Elizabeth Rodrigues

Hosted by Marshall Poe
On a near-daily basis, data is being used to narrate our lives. Categorizing algorithms drawn from amassed personal data to assign narrative destinies to individuals at crucial junctures, simultaneously predicting …
General History May 16, 2022

High Minds

The Victorians and the Birth of Modern Britain

Simon Heffer

Hosted by Albert Zambone
Britain in the 1840s should have been, observes Simon Heffer, a time of great social improvement. Instead it was a country that was beset by poverty, unrest, assassination attempts on …
European Politics May 16, 2022

The Political Philosophy of the European City

From Polis, Through City-State, to Megalopolis?

Ferenc Hörcher

Hosted by Stephen Satkiewicz
To many the city might seem simply a large urban area to live within, but it actually forms an important political concept and community that has been influential throughout European …