Historically Thinking
We believe that when people think historically, they are engaging in a disciplined way of thinking about the world and its past. We believe it gives thinkers a knack for recognizing nonsense; and that it cultivates not only intellectual curiosity and rigor, but also intellectual humility. Join Al Zambone, author of Daniel Morgan: A Revolutionary Life, as he talks with historians and other professionals who cultivate the craft of historical thinking.
Show episodes
Londoner, Lawyer, Humanist, Husband, Statesman, Saint: The Life of Thomas More, with Joanne Paul
His friend the great scholar Desiderius Erasmus referred to Thomas More as “a Man for all seasons.” But which season? Or which Thomas More? Is he an advocate of conscience? A heroic defender of the Catholic faith? A saintly martyr? A fanatical zealot unwilling to listen to cool reason? An amateur inquisitor who lit the
The Accidental Tyrant: Kim Il-Sung’s Rise to Power, and How He Kept It, with Fyodor Tertitskiy
In 1945, Kim Il-Sung was a minor figure with no political power in Korea. Within months, he was elevated by Soviet authorities to lead North Korea. Historian Fyodor Tertitskiy joins us to discuss The Accidental Tyrant, his new biography of Kim, and explains how this obscure guerrilla commander became one of the most du
Joseph Smith was the founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, known by those outside the church during his life and today as the Mormons. But Joseph Smith was many things besides: the child of a struggling family gradually moving westward in search of opportunity, a day laborer, visionary, seer; trea
In our conversation, Dan Edelstein traces the intellectual history of revolution as an idea—from its origins in classical antiquity to its dramatic transformation during the Enlightenment, to its seeming maturation in the 20th Century
Stephen Aron and Barry Strauss on History, Engaging a Wider Public, and Intellectual Humility
This week’s episode features not one but two conversations—with Aron and Strauss—which, while it may sound like a jazz-age songwriting duo, is in fact a pairing of two distinguished historians: Stephen Aron and Barry Strauss. They join our ongoing series of interviews exploring historians’ early love of the past and th
Sometime in the 800s, an anonymous monk in the abbey of Fulda–now in modern Germany–copied out a Latin history in one of the great inventions of the age, the handwriting known as Carolingian miniscule, which is more or less they system that we use today to print the English alphabet. Thanks to that monk, today we have
