Episode summary: Emily Oster is an economist, professor, and author. Her new book is The Family Firm. ”[COVID] has been 18 months of being a person who is slightly more public, who is saying things that are somewhat more controversial, where people yell at me a lot. … I do much less reading of the c...

Episode summary: Massimo Montanari & Rachel Roddy: A History of Spaghetti with Tomato Sauce | London Review Bookshop

Episode summary: 1. Please continue. 2. The experiment requires that you continue. 3. It is absolutely essential that you continue. 4. You have no other choice, you must go on. Gina Perry’s book is Behind the Shock Machine: The Untold Story of the Notorious Milgram Psychology Experiments Say hello o...

Episode summary: Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the events of 21st October 1805, in which the British fleet led by Nelson destroyed a combined Franco-Spanish fleet in the Atlantic off the coast of Spain. Nelson’s death that day was deeply mourned in Britain, and his example proved influential, and...

Episode summary: In several countries around the world, including Ecuador, New Zealand, and the U.S., some people are trying to protect the planet using a legal concept called “rights of nature” – infusing the law with Indigenous understandings of Mother Earth. Part 9 of The Repair, our series on th...

Episode summary: How do you find the form to tell a life?

Episode summary: In much of the western world, alphabetical order is simply a default we take for granted. It’s often the one we try first — or the one we use as a last resort when all the other ordering methods fail. It’s boring, but it works, and it’s so ingrained that it’s hard to imagine not usi...

Episode summary: Kevin Esvelt, a scientist at MIT, argues that research intended to prevent pandemics is actually putting us in a lot more danger. Also discussed: Kevin’s own research on engineering wild animal species. Are the risks worth the benefits?

Episode summary: As the Nazi nightmare came to an end Thomas Mann thought long and hard about collective guilt. Can Mann’s idea help America in 2021, or do we need a new theory of collective shame. NYRB has put out a recent collection of Mann’s political writings.

Episode summary: Josie Long presents audio adventures and short documentaries about what’s gone before. A daughter’s decades-long search for her father who went missing as a political prisoner in South Africa, a poem by the German-American poet Lisel Mueller listing the parts that make up our memori...