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There’s a lot that’s dividing Americans right now - lots of divisive narratives that have captivated lots of people. One of those narratives features the apparent widening political divide between urban and rural culture. But, the truth is that the evolution of America’s urban and rural communities has always been symbiotic. To help support Context and access bonus content, join me on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/bradcoleharris Learn more on my website at https://www.bradharris.com/

"Notes on Nationalism" was an essay written by George Orwell in 1945, just as World War II was ending. It caused quite a stir at the time, but most people these days have never heard of it. Nonetheless, "Notes on Nationalism" remains one of the most powerful examples of Orwell's timeless insight into human nature; in this case, focused on our instinct to gang up on each other, our instinct for tribalism. To help support Context and access bonus episodes, visit...

Like many others, I’ve begun to worry about the fate of higher education in American society. Modern civilization relies on a significant number of us possessing hard-earned historical perspective on what is true and what is good, and hard-earned scientific perspective on the full reach of human potential. Any threat to the university system should worry us. Today, there appear to be multiple. Access bonus episodes at patreon.com/bradcoleharris Learn more at bradharris.com

Postmodernism planted the seeds of the illiberalism that's erupting throughout our society today. The battle of ideas postmodern thinking provokes could very well determine the fate of liberal democracy our lifetime. Learn more in today's episode, Explaining Postmodernism: A Conversation with Stephen Hicks.

"History does not repeat itself, but it often rhymes." ~Mark Twain As Neil Howe and William Strauss wrote in their best-selling book The Fourth Turning, “The reward of the historian is to locate patterns that recur over time and to discover the natural rhythms of social experience.” According to the pattern they predicted, we should be in the midst of a historical crisis. Are we? If so, what happens next? Access supporter-only episodes at patreon.com/context More info at bradharris.com

How bad can things get?

"Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it." Lately, it seems like our society is attempting to replace truth with power, forgetting that all other societies that have done this have failed miserably. One of the worst features of our society, we are told, is wealth inequality. But, what is the historical truth about wealth inequality? Drawing inspiration from Walter Scheidel's book, The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality, we explore the history of wealth...

The history of calculus may seem irrelevant to most of our going concerns, but as author and mathematician Strogatz shows, the spirit of calculus expresses one of the best ideas humanity has ever had: greatness is not to be found in the end, but in the effort. Support the show on https://www.patreon.com/context Learn more at https://bradharris.com

Carl Sagan was a brilliant popularizer of science.  His book, The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, helps to inspire clear thinking when chaos reigns supreme.  Here, I share my thoughts on the important themes of that work.   To access bonus episodes and all regular episodes ad-free, join me on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/context Learn more at https://bradharris.com

There is an overlooked rule in history: far more is lost and forgotten than is preserved and remembered. Humanity knows more and is more powerful than ever. But, are we getting wiser?  What if our ignorance outgrows our potential? What happens when rich and powerful societies lose their wisdom and forget what made them great in the first place?  It's happened before, and there is a Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Stephen Greenblatt that tells the tale: The Swerve: How the World Became Modern.

Today, we explore the origin of the modern concept of a fact. We take facts for granted, but they represent an invaluable intellectual technology less than 400 years old, which was forged in a fight between two of history’s brightest thinkers battling over the best way to rescue their society from the madness of medieval barbarism.   We review a book that gives us a front row seat to that fight: Leviathan and the Air Pump, published by the historians of science Steve Shapin and Simon Schaffer.

Today I'm speaking with Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen, a historian from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. It would be hard to find a scholar better equipped to enhance our historical perspective on how we decide what's true. Jennifer and I challenge each other's thinking on whether ideas about natural rights were discovered or created, whether or not the distinction between objective truth and pragmatic truth really matters, how we reconcile timeless values with scientific disruption, and...

Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind became one of the most influential books of the last 50 years, instigating a battle over the soul of the American university that’s been raging ever since.    It became a powerful weapon in Bloom's fight against a morally and intellectually crippling form of relativism infecting America’s educational system by reminding us that the goal of education is not to become open to all ideas, but to cultivate the search for the best ideas.

In this episode, we witness the birth of the most powerful idea in history and how it came to define the meaning of America. This is the idea that argument represents the best path to progress and to justice for all, and that to institutionalize this via a Constitutional right to freedom of speech is the best way to preserve a prosperous society. Joseph Ellis captures the story behind this idea in Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation, which won the Pulitzer Prize in history.

Niall Ferguson is one of the most influential historians of our generation. His professional effort extends well beyond academia to ensure that policy makers and the public better understand how to apply historical lessons to current issues. Niall and I connected to further discuss some of those issues. We talk about the changing politics of academia, the growing challenge of interpreting history productively, the problem of judging the past by the moral standards of the present, and more.

Niall Ferguson, perhaps the most famous historian of our generation, offers yet another breakthrough in his latest work, The Square and the Tower. Through groundbreaking research, Ferguson reveals how social networks, from the Freemasons of the middle ages to Facebook in the 21st century, disrupt established hierarchies to divert the course of history, both for better and for worse. Join me at patreon.com/context for ad-free episodes and bonus content. Visit https://bradharris.com to learn...

Is there a logic to history?  Many scholars insist that each culture may only be understood on its own terms, but In Why the West Rules - For Now, Ian Morris counters that if we study how human biology, sociology, and geography interact, it's possible to discover a fundamental pattern in history to help us answer the biggest historical questions, from why the West rules for now, to what will happen next. Access bonus episodes on https://www.patreon.com/context. Learn more at...

A conversation with Bryan Ward-Perkins, author of The Fall of Rome, & the End of Civilization.  It's become fashionable to argue that Roman civilization never collapsed but was merely transformed. This counter-narrative may illuminate intellectual developments of Late Antiquity, but verges on cultural relativism that obscures real suffering. Ward-Perkins' book is a reality check of how dark the post-Roman age really was. Bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/context More info:...

The Two Cultures was one of the most influential lectures of the 20th century, triggering an intense debate regarding the status of science that has persisted to this day. The main theme of Snow's lecture was to raise alarm about the growing knowledge gap between modern society's scientists and everyone else, and to reinvigorate respect for science among cultural elites who were increasingly dismissive of it. Support Context at https://www.patreon.com/context Learn more at...

Merchants of Doubt is not just a book about how illusions of scientific controversy have been constructed, it’s also about the people who constructed them, and its most shocking revelation is that the very same people used the very same strategy to prevent regulation on cigarette smoking, acid rain, the ozone hole, and global warming over the span of nearly 50 years. Support Context on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/context Learn more at https://bradharris.com

If civilization collapsed, and our descendants could rediscover one work to get back on track, Peter Atkins’ Galileo’s Finger: The Ten Great Ideas of Science, would be a contender. If there are miracles, Atkins would argue they are not found in the conjectures of things unexplained, but in the power to achieve cosmic insights through science. Here, he distills his choices for the most profound of those insights. Support Context at https://www.patreon.com/context Learn more...

In this episode, I'll read an article I published in American Scientist called "Evolution's Other Narrative." (https://www.americanscientist.org/article/evolutions-other-narrative) Given our conversation last time about disease in the history of civilization, this article can supplement our understanding of humanity's co-evolution with microbes. To support Context and get all episodes ad-free plus bonus content, go to https://www.patreon.com/context, or https://bradharris.com for more...