The Life and Death of Arthur Hertzberg
…is the kind of history he produced: not a history that made Jews feel good, but a history that made Jews think. “The Jews in America” is an easy book…
Whaling was, in the words of one scholar, “early capitalism unleashed on the high seas.” How did the U.S. come to dominate the whale market? Why did whale hunting die…
The world’s great museums are full of art and artifacts that were plundered during an era when plunder was the norm. Now there’s a push to return these works to…
After a huge false start, electric cars are finally about to flourish. We speak with a technology historian about this all-too-common story, and what it means for innovation everywhere….
…Levitt talks to Kerwin Charles about his parents’ encouragement, his love of Sports Illustrated, and how he talks to his American-born kids about the complicated history of Blackness in America….
Guest host Adam Davidson looks at what might happen to your job in a world of human-level artificial intelligence, and asks when it might be time to worry that the…
…is the kind of history he produced: not a history that made Jews feel good, but a history that made Jews think. “The Jews in America” is an easy book…
How did a nation of immigrants come to hate immigration? We start at the beginning, sort through the evidence, and explain why your grandfather was lying about Ellis Island. (Part…
From politics and economics to psychology and the arts, many of the modern ideas we take for granted emerged a century ago from a single European capital. In this episode…
From politics and economics to psychology and the arts, many of the modern ideas we take for granted emerged a century ago from a single European capital. In this episode…
…Clark Morgan Director of the Archives of the History of American Psychology, University of Akron, and co-author of the book From Séance to Science: A History of the Profession of…
As sexy as the digital revolution may be, it can’t compare to the Second Industrial Revolution (electricity! the gas engine! antibiotics!), which created the biggest standard-of-living boost in U.S. history….
In the first of two episodes, Zachary Crockett digs into the strange and discomfiting history of cadavers, and the industry that has emerged around them.
…he turned his local TV affiliate, TBS, into a national TV station, and the rest became history. Rule No. 3: Know the history of the executives. At HBO, I studied…
…and age, and why. Here are their answers. Howard Zinn is professor emeritus in the political science department at Boston University, and author of the book A People’s History of…
…history of your customers in every way. Company history, personal history, marketing history, investing history, etc. P) Micro-manage software development. Nobody knows your product better than you do. If you…
Evidence from Nazi Germany and 1940s America (and pretty much everywhere else) shows that discrimination is incredibly costly — to the victims, of course, but also the perpetrators. One modern…
Evidence from Nazi Germany and 1940’s America (and pretty much everywhere else) shows that discrimination is incredibly costly — to the victims, of course, but also the perpetrators. One modern…
Michael Roth of Wesleyan University doesn’t hang out with other university presidents. He also thinks some of them have failed a basic test of good sense and decency. It’s time…
Economist Daron Acemoglu likes to tackle big questions. He tells Steve how colonialism still affects us today, who benefits from new technology, and why democracy wasn’t always a sure thing….
How did a freshly looted Egyptian antiquity end up in the Metropolitan Museum of Art? Why did it take Kim Kardashian to crack the case? And how much of what…
He’s a professor of computation and behavioral science at the University of Chicago, MacArthur “Genius Grant” recipient, and author. Steve and Sendhil laugh their way through a conversation about the…
Mary Daly rose from high-school dropout to president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. She thinks the central bank needs an upgrade too. It starts with recognizing that…
The gist: the argument for open borders is compelling — and deeply problematic.
…learned to be skeptical of common sense, especially when it is invoked as the solution to complex social problems. Sociology, of course, has its own conflicted history with common sense….
…anomalous presidencies in American history. So once again we try to sort out presidential signal from noise. What we hear from legal and policy experts may leave you surprised, befuddled…
…he had accepted over $2 million in bribes, the largest amount in U.S. Congressional history. Seth Hettena, an A.P. reporter who covered the scandal, has now written a book about…
…a heavily-armed populace, a fragile mental-health system, and the fact that we spend so much time in our cars. Add in a history of racism and it’s no surprise that…
…trip to the NBA’s lottery. After all of these lottery picks, the Bobcats finally made the playoffs in 2010. That Bobcat team – the best in franchise history – only…
…“Long Peace” is merely the calm before the storm? World War II happened less than a century ago and was by far the highest casualty war in recorded history (if…
In a conversation fresh from the Freakonomics Radio Network’s podcast laboratory, Michèle Flournoy (one of the highest-ranking women in Defense Department history) speaks with Cecil Haney (one of the U.S….
