history

#1101 Laura Betzig - The Badge of Lost Innocence: A History of the West

May 23, 2025

Dr. Laura Betzig is a Ph.D. in anthropology at Northwestern University; she’s held research and teaching positions at Northwestern, the University of California, and the University of Michigan Museum of Natural History. She’s lectured all over the US and Europe in departments of biology, anthropology, history, economics, philosophy, political science, psychology and religion; at interdisciplinary conferences; and to general audiences. She’s also the author of four books, the latest one being The Badge of Lost Innocence: A History of the West. More»
#1075 Michael Cook: A History of the Muslim World (Part 1)

Mar 24, 2025

Dr. Michael Cook is Class of 1943 University Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. He is the author of several books, with the latest one being A History of the Muslim World: From Its Origins to the Dawn of Modernity. More»
#1073 David Wolpert: History as a Stochastic Process

Mar 20, 2025

Dr. David Wolpert is a Professor at the Santa Fe Institute, external professor at the Complexity Science Hub in Vienna, adjunct professor at ASU, and research associate at the ICTP in Trieste. He has over 30,000 citations, with most of his papers in thermodynamics of computation, foundations of physics, dynamics of social organizations, machine learning, game theory, and distributed optimization / control. More»
#1057 Daniel Hoyer: Cliodynamics, Inequality, Elite Overproduction, and Revolution

Feb 10, 2025

Dr. Daniel Hoyer is Senior Research Associate & Managing Director for Seshat: Global History Databank, Research Scientist with the SocialAI Research Group, and Founder of SODY. He is the author of Figuring Out The Past: The 3,495 Vital Statistics that Explain World History. More»
#978 Sophie Scott-Brown: European Political Thought, Anarchism, and Steven Pinker's Progressivism

Aug 9, 2024

Dr. Sophie Scott-Brown is a Research Fellow at the University of St. Andrews, and Future Fellow at Remarque Institute, NYU. She is also Founder of the Everyday Democracy project with Open Society Foundation. She is well-known for her historical work on left-wing politics, especially the post-war British left, and for her intellectual biography of Raphael Samuel entitled The Histories of Raphael Samuel - A Portrait of A People’s Historian (2017). More»
#956 Edward Watts - Hypatia: The Life and Legend of an Ancient Philosopher

Jun 20, 2024

Dr. Edward Watts is presently the Vassiliadis Professor of Byzantine Greek History at the University of California, San Diego, where he was formerly Co-Director of the Center for Hellenic Studies. His research interests center on the intellectual and religious history of the Roman Empire and the early Byzantine Empire. He is the author of several books on ancient history, including Mortal Republic: How Rome Fell Into Tyranny, The Eternal Decline and Fall of Rome: The History of a Dangerous Idea, and Hypatia: The Life and Legend of an Ancient Philosopher. More»
#930 Rebecca Earle: The History and Politics of the Potato

Apr 19, 2024

Dr. Rebecca Earle is a Professor in the Department of History at the University of Warwick. She is a historian, specializing in the history of food and colonial and 19th-century Spanish America. She is the author of books like “The Body of the Conquistador: Food, Race and the Colonial Experience in Spanish America, 1492-1700”, “Potato”, and “Feeding the People: The Politics of the Potato”. More»
#925 Amanda Podany: The History and Legacy of Mesopotamia

Apr 8, 2024

Dr. Amanda Podany is Professor Emeritus of History at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. She specializes in the study of Syria and Mesopotamia in the Middle and Late Bronze Age. She is the author of books like The Land of Hana: Kings, Chronology, and Scribal Tradition, The Ancient Near Eastern World, Brotherhood of Kings: How International Relations Shaped the Ancient Near East, The Ancient Near East: A Very Short Introduction, and the most recent one, Weavers, Scribes, and Kings: A New History of the Ancient Near East. She is also the instructor in a series of video and audio lectures for The Great Courses called Ancient Mesopotamia: Life in the Cradle of Civilization. More»
#854 Naomi Oreskes - The Big Myth; Learning to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market

Oct 30, 2023

Dr. Naomi Oreskes is Henry Charles Lea Professor of the History of Science and Affiliated Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University. A world-renowned earth scientist, historian and public speaker, she is the author of the best-selling book, Merchants of Doubt (2010) and a leading voice on the role of science in society, the reality of anthropogenic climate change, and the role of disinformation in blocking climate action. Dr. Oreskes is author or co-author of 9 books, the latest one being The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market. More»
#850 James McCann - Maize and Grace: A History of Africa’s Encounter with a New World Crop

Oct 20, 2023

Dr. James McCann is Professor Emeritus of History at Boston University. Dr. McCann’s research and teaching interests include agricultural and ecological history of Africa, Ethiopia, and the Horn of Africa, field research methods in African studies, the agro-ecology of tropical disease, and the history of food/cuisine in Africa and the Atlantic world. He is the author of books like Stirring the Pot: A History of African Cuisine; Maize and Grace: A History of Africa’s Encounter with a New World Crop; People of the Plow: An Agricultural History of Ethiopia; and From Poverty to Famine in Northeast Ethiopia: Rural History, 1900-1995. More»