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About Mark Klobas

I'm a history instructor at Scottsdale Community College in Scottsdale, Arizona. I earned my BA in History from the University of Arizona, and my MA and Ph.D. from Texas A&M University.

NBN Episodes hosted by Mark:

Princeton UP Ideas Podcast December 1, 2023

How We Age

The Science of Longevity

Coleen T. Murphy

Hosted by Mark Klobas
Listen:
All of us would like to live longer, or to slow the debilitating effects of age. In How We Age: The Science of Longevity (Princeton UP, 2023), Coleen Murphy shows …
Princeton UP Ideas Podcast November 15, 2023

The Dialectic Is in the Sea

The Black Radical Thought of Beatriz Nascimento

Beatriz Nascimento

Hosted by Mark Klobas
Beatriz Nascimento (1942-1995) was a poet, historian, artist, and political leader in Brazil's Black movement, an innovative and creative thinker whose work offers a radical reimagining of gender, space, politics …
Princeton UP Ideas Podcast November 1, 2023

The Career Arts

Making the Most of College, Credentials, and Connections

Ben Wildavsky

Hosted by Mark Klobas
Listen:
Young people coming out of high school today can expect to hold many jobs over the course of their lives, which is why they need a range of essential skills …
Princeton UP Ideas Podcast October 15, 2023

American Classicist

The Life and Loves of Edith Hamilton

Victoria Houseman

Hosted by Mark Klobas
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 …
Exchanges: A Cambridge UP Podcast October 9, 2023

Why Not Moderation?

Letters to Young Radicals

Aurelian Craiutu

Hosted by Mark Klobas
Listen:
Moderation is often presented as a simple virtue for lukewarm and indecisive minds, searching for a fuzzy center between the extremes. Not surprisingly, many politicians do not want to be …
Princeton UP Ideas Podcast October 1, 2023

Free Agents

How Evolution Gave Us Free Will

Kevin J. Mitchell

Hosted by Mark Klobas
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 …
Princeton UP Ideas Podcast September 15, 2023

To Build a Black Future

The Radical Politics of Joy, Pain, and Care

Christopher Paul Harris

Hosted by Mark Klobas
Listen:
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 …
Princeton UP Ideas Podcast September 2, 2023

Fool

In Search of Henry VIII's Closest Man

Peter K. Andersson

Hosted by Mark Klobas
Listen:
The first biography of Henry VIII’s court fool William Somer, a legendary entertainer and one of the most intriguing figures of the Tudor ageIn some portraits of Henry VIII there …
Princeton UP Ideas Podcast August 15, 2023

Alien Worlds

How Insects Conquered the Earth, and Why Their Fate Will Determine Our Future

Steve Nicholls

Hosted by Mark Klobas
Listen:
Life on Earth depends on the busy activities of insects, but global populations of these teeming creatures are currently under threat, with grave consequences for us all. Steve Nicholls' book Alien …
Biography August 12, 2023

Napoleon

The Decline and Fall of an Empire, 1811-1821

Michael Broers

Hosted by Mark Klobas
In 1811, Napoleon stood at his zenith. He had defeated all his continental rivals, come to an entente with Russia, and his blockade of Britain seemed, at long last, to …
Military History August 10, 2023

A Boston Schooner in the Royal Navy, 1768-1772

Commerce and Conflict in Maritime British America

Phillip Reid

Hosted by Mark Klobas
Listen:
The small Boston-built schooner Sultana served as a customs-enforcement interceptor on the North American eastern seaboard in the period leading up to the American Declaration of Independence, when British taxation …
Princeton UP Ideas Podcast August 1, 2023

24/7 Politics

Cable Television and the Fragmenting of America from Watergate to Fox News

Kathryn Cramer Brownell

Hosted by Mark Klobas
Listen:
As television began to overtake the political landscape in the 1960s, network broadcast companies, bolstered by powerful lobbying interests, dominated screens across the nation. Yet over the next three decades …
Princeton UP Ideas Podcast July 15, 2023

How the Universe Got Its Spots

Diary of a Finite Time in a Finite Space

Janna Levin

Hosted by Mark Klobas
Is the universe infinite or just really big? With this question, cosmologist Janna Levin announces the central theme of this book, which established her as one of the most direct …
Exchanges: A Cambridge UP Podcast July 15, 2023

Brooding over Bloody Revenge

Enslaved Women's Lethal Resistance

Nikki M. Taylor

Hosted by Mark Klobas
From the colonial through the antebellum era, enslaved women in the US used lethal force as the ultimate form of resistance. By amplifying their voices and experiences, Brooding over Bloody …
Princeton UP Ideas Podcast July 1, 2023

Henry at Work

Thoreau on Making a Living

John Kaag and Jonathan van Belle

Hosted by Mark Klobas
Listen:
Henry at Work: Thoreau on Making a Living (Princeton UP, 2023) invites readers to rethink how we work today by exploring an aspect of Henry David Thoreau that has often …
Princeton UP Ideas Podcast June 15, 2023

Pleasure and Efficacy

Of Pen Names, Cover Versions, and Other Trans Techniques

Grace Elisabeth Lavery

Hosted by Mark Klobas
Listen:
In Pleasure and Efficacy: Of Pen Names, Cover Versions, and Other Trans Techniques (Princeton UP, 2023), Grace Lavery investigates gender transition as it has been experienced and represented in the modern …
Exchanges: A Cambridge UP Podcast June 14, 2023

Five Times Faster

Rethinking the Science, Economics, and Diplomacy of Climate Change

Simon Sharpe

Hosted by Mark Klobas
Listen:
We need to act five times faster to avoid dangerous climate change. As Greenland melts, Australia burns, and greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, we think we know who the …
Princeton UP Ideas Podcast May 30, 2023

Night Vision

Seeing Ourselves Through Dark Moods

Mariana Alessandri

Hosted by Mark Klobas
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 …
Princeton UP Ideas Podcast May 15, 2023

Period

The Real Story of Menstruation

Kate Clancy

Hosted by Mark Klobas
Menstruation is something half the world does for a week at a time, for months and years on end, yet it remains largely misunderstood. Scientists once thought of an individual's …
Princeton UP Ideas Podcast April 24, 2023

Please Make Me Pretty, I Don't Want to Die

Poems

Tawanda Mulalu

Hosted by Mark Klobas
Please Make Me Pretty, I Don't Want to Die (Princeton UP, 2022) explores tactility, sound, sensuality, and intimacy. Set across the four seasons of a year, these fresh and original …
Princeton UP Ideas Podcast April 15, 2023

Parfit

A Philosopher and His Mission to Save Morality

David Edmonds

Hosted by Mark Klobas
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 …
Princeton UP Ideas Podcast April 1, 2023

When Eero Met His Match

Aline Louchheim Saarinen and the Making of an Architect

Eva Hagberg

Hosted by Mark Klobas
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 …
In Conversation: An OUP Podcast March 26, 2023

Healing Hearts and Minds

A Holistic Approach to Coping Well with Congenital Heart Disease

Tracy Livecchi and Liza Morton

Hosted by Mark Klobas
Congenital Heart Disease (CHD) is the most commonly diagnosed birth abnormality in the US. With great advances in surgery and medicine, however, survival rates have improved by 75% since the …
Exchanges: A Cambridge UP Podcast March 20, 2023

Just as Deadly

The Psychology of Female Serial Killers

Marissa A. Harrison

Hosted by Mark Klobas
You've heard of Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy. But have you heard of Amy Archer-Gilligan? Or Belle Gunness? Or Nannie Doss? Women have committed some of the most disturbing …