The World in Time / Lapham’s Quarterly

Every man is an ecosystem, ejecting some of the 39 trillion microbes each person on earth contains. While microbes are among the oldest living organisms on earth, it wasn’t until 1675 that scientists began to understand their existence—or their scope. Lewis Lapham talks with Ed Yong, author of I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life, about discovering communities of microbes that exists within us. Thanks to our generous donors. Lead support for this podcast has been provided by Elizabeth “Lisette” Prince. Additional support was provided by James J. “Jimmy” Coleman Jr.

How do you measure change? It is often said that the twentieth century saw more change than any other period. But today’s interest in modern technology obscures the massive changes the world has undergone over the past millennium. Lewis Lapham talks with Ian Mortimer, author of Millennium: From Religion to Revolution: How Civilization Has Changed Over a Thousand Years, about the history of change and why it matters. Thanks to our generous donors. Lead support for this podcast has been provided by Elizabeth “Lisette” Prince. Additional support was provided by James J. “Jimmy” Coleman Jr.

In 1791 an American military expedition led by General Arthur St. Clair to assert U.S. claims in the region north and west of the Ohio River was attacked by a confederation of Shawnee, Miami, and Delaware Indians that hoped to stop the country’s westward expansion. With nearly one thousand U.S. casualties, the American defeat was the worst the country would ever suffer at native hands. Americans were shocked, perhaps none more so than their commander in chief, George Washington, who saw in the debacle an urgent lesson: the United States needed an army. Lewis H. Lapham talks with William Hogeland, author of Autumn of the Black Snake: The Creation of the U.S. Army and the Invasion That Opened the West, about the United States’ first standing army and its victory over the coalition of native forces that sought to halt the country's expansion. Thanks to our generous donors. Lead support for this podcast has been provided by Elizabeth “Lisette” Prince. Additional support was provided by James J. “Jimmy” Coleman Jr.

In the sixteenth century 300,000 people lived in the imperial quarter of Beijing, which housed the bureaucracy of the Chinese state. At the time Europe had only three cities—London, Naples, and Paris—with as many residents. European governments were by contrast small and static. Over the past five hundred years, partly in response to the grand scale of government power in Asia and the Islamic world, Western nations have gone through a series of revolutions in government: from Thomas Hobbes’ imagining of the modern nation state to liberal reforms advocated by John Stuart Mill and William Gladstone and the advent of the welfare state. Lewis Lapham talks to John Micklethwait, co-author, with Adrian Wooldridge, of The Fourth Revolution: The Global Race to Reinvent the State, about the history of government in the West and rethinking the machinery of the state in the twenty-first century. Thanks to our generous donors. Lead support for this podcast has been provided by Elizabeth “Lisette” Prince. Additional support was provided by James J. “Jimmy” Coleman Jr.

From the end of World War II to 1980 virtually no American soldiers were killed in action while serving in the Middle East; since 1990 virtually no American soldiers have been killed anywhere except the Middle East. Lewis Lapham speaks with Andrew J. Bacevich, author of America’s War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History, about America’s shift from the Cold War to war in the Middle East. Thanks to our generous donors. Lead support for this podcast has been provided by Elizabeth “Lisette” Prince. Additional support was provided by James J. “Jimmy” Coleman Jr.

Lewis H. Lapham talks with Nancy Isenberg, author of White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America, about the language of poverty and American myths about class, work, and equality. Thanks to our generous donors. Lead support for this podcast has been provided by Elizabeth “Lisette” Prince. Additional support was provided by James J. “Jimmy” Coleman Jr.