Episode 125: Burning
"Sometimes I burn barns." Things aren't always what they seem in Haruki Murakami's surreal and incredible short story "Barn Burning." What could be read on the surface as the tale of a love triangle and a little arson ac…
Reflecting History
Reflecting History is an educational history podcast that explores significant historical events and themes without losing track of the ordinary people involved. Covering a wide variety of topics, it explores the connection between history, psychology, and philosophy.
Episodes
BONUS: Staying Behind
In a dystopian future, humanity is faced with a choice: upload your consciousness into a machine and live forever in paradise, or stay behind and continue being human as we've come to know it. In his short story "Staying…
Episode 124: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Wounded World with Chad Williams
In this episode I spoke with historian Chad Williams about his latest book-"The Wounded World: W.E.B. Du Bois and the First World War" We discussed the legacy of Du Bois; his views on identity and double consciousness; W…
Episode 123: Piranesi
"The Beauty of the House is immeasurable; it's kindness infinite." Piranesi lives in an infinite house, with no long-term memory and only a loose sense of identity. As the secrets of the House deepen and the mystery of h…
Episode 122: Story of Your Life
What if it was possible to "remember" the future? What if our typical conceptions of cause and effect didn't tell the whole story? If the story of your life was laid out in front of you, how would that change you as a pe…
Episode 121: Ikiru
What is the meaning of life? What does it mean to really live? What is the nature of bureaucracy and how does this seep into our everyday lives and relationships? These questions and more are analyzed in Akira Kurosawa's…
Episode 120: The Memory Police
Yoko Ogawa's 1994 masterpiece "The Memory Police" is much more than a dystopian novel. It delves into the ways that memory connects with everything-from our deepest sense of self, to our friendships and relationships, to…
Episode 119: The Buried Giant
It's been said that you are what you remember. What is the role and function of memory on a personal level and how does this connect to collective memory and history? Does collective memory fuel cycles of violence? What…
BONUS: Dreams and the Supersensorium
Why do we dream? What is the difference between dreaming and being awake? Is the modern world around us merely an "artificial dream"-with it's constant barrage of sensory input, screens to look at, and narratives to dive…
Episode 118: What Remains Part IV-Generational Grief
By the end of the Taiping Civil War, millions in China felt the grief of being caught in limbo between remembering and forgetting, personal and state, past and future. Ultimately the more intimate, personal grief felt by…
