10:00 AM Pacific Time: Monday - Thursday
Letters & Politics seeks to explore the history behind today’s major global and national news stories. Hosted by Mitch Jeserich.
A conversation with Kyle Harper about one of the most consequential chapters of human history: the fall of the Roman Empire. Central to this issue are question such as how does an empire fall? What was the role of climate change and pandemic diseases in the collapse of Rome’s power. Guest: Kyle Harper is a historian of the … Continued
We are in conversation with Lillian Faderman about her book The Gay Revolution. It begins in the 1950s, when law classified gays and lesbians as criminals, the psychiatric profession saw them as mentally ill, the churches saw them as sinners, and society victimized them with irrational hatred. Against this dark backdrop, a few brave people … Continued
A conversation on the history of the Roe v Wade decision and on the man considered a legal jurist at one time who will right the majority opinion Harry Blackmun. Guest: Linda Greenhouse is Joseph Goldstein Lecturer in Law at Yale Law School and a Pulitzer Prize–winning Supreme Court journalist who is a contributing Op-Ed … Continued
A conversation on re-segregation in American life today. According to author Jeff Chang “resegragation is one of the most under-thought and under-recognized issues of our times. It is a fact that the U.S. is moving towards becoming a “majority-minority” country. In California is already happening. And in the Bay Area we are racially re-segregating at … Continued
As the United States charges Julian Assange under the Espionage Act of 1917 today we dive into the history of this act and even go further back to 1798 and the first Sedition Act in which the political times resemble those of our own. Guest: Geoffrey R. Stone is the Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service … Continued
Today, we air a conversation with Pulitzer Prize author and reporter Tony Horowitz in an interview conducted about a week and a half ago talking about a sojourn into the deep South. Tony Horowitz unexpectedly died last Sunday potentially of a heart attack. He wrote extensively throughout his career about the Civil War, and the … Continued
Special counsel Robert Mueller made his first remarks since his report has came out into the 2016 election. And then, he resigned from his appointment as Special Counsel. Today, we bring you his full statement and then we’ll get reaction with guest John Nichols, Washington correspondent of the Nation Magazine.
A conversation with scholar Christina Proenza-Coles about the role that people of African ancestry have played in the formation of the Americas; and not just in the United States but the entire continent. Guest: Christina Proenza-Coles is author of the book American Founders: How People of African Descent Established Freedom in the New World.
In concluding our series of conversations on the ancient world, today, we look at the Caliphates of the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries in Baghdad and Cordoba. Guest: Violet Moller is a historian and writer who specializes in intellectual history. She is the author of the book The Map of Knowledge: A Thousand-Year History … Continued
More than two thousand years ago, in ancient Rome lived a poet named Lucrecious whose work on the nature of things revolutionized the way people understood the universe. Lucrecious thought that the universe functioned without the aid of gods, that religious fear was damaging to human life, and that matter was made up of very … Continued
