The World in Time / Lapham’s Quarterly

Lewis H. Lapham speaks with Dennis C. Rasmussen author of “Fears of a Setting Sun: The Disillusionment of America’s Founders.” 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 speaks with Richard Thompson Ford, author of “Dress Codes: How the Laws of Fashion Made History.” 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 speaks with Lance Morrow, author of “God and Mammon: Chronicles of American Money.” 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 speaks with David S. Brown, author of “The Last American Aristocrat: The Brilliant Life and Improbable Education of Henry Adams.” 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 speaks with Michael J. Sandel, author of “The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good.” 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 speaks with George Dyson, author of Analogia: The Emergence of Technology Beyond Programmable Control. 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.

“No American president has ever counted himself fully satisfied with his press coverage,” the historian Harold Holzer writes in the introduction of “The Presidents vs. the Press.” “Their belief that they are better than their bad press, and that they bear a nearly sacred obligation to counter or control criticism, has remained fixed since the age of bewigged chief executives and hand-screwed printing presses.” Lewis H. Lapham speaks with Harold Holzer, author of “The Presidents vs. the Press: The Endless Battle between the White House and the Media—from the Founding Fathers to Fake News.” 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 speaks with Jacob Goldstein, author of “Money: The True Story of a Made-Up Thing.” 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 November 1944,” Edward D. Melillo writes in his book The Butterfly Effect​, “Decca Records released a single featuring Ella Fitzgerald and the Ink Spots. ‘Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall’ skyrocketed to number one on the top of the Billboard charts in the United States and inaugurated a long-term collaboration between the ‘First Lady of Song’ and the fabled record producer Milt Gabler. A century before this musical milestone, the Ottoman sultan Abdülmecid I founded the Hereke Imperial Carpet Manufacture to supply elaborate silk rugs for his Dolmabahçe Palace on the Bosphorus. These extravagant carpets, among the finest ever woven, featured between three and four thousand knots per square inch. Six decades earlier, on October 19, 1781, Brigadier General Charles O’Hara of His Britannic Majesty’s Coldstream Guards donned his distinctive scarlet officer’s coat, strode onto the battlefield at Yorktown, Virginia, and surrendered the sword of Lieutenant General Charles Cornwallis to Major General Benjamin Lincoln of the American Continental Army. A trio of more incongruous events, spanning three centuries, is difficult to imagine, yet these episodes share an astonishing feature. They depended on the tremendous productive capacity of domesticated insects.” This week on the podcast, Melillo and Lewis H. Lapham discuss events like these across human history, which show how, despite any annoyance we might feel at the prospect, the world as we know it would cease to function without insects. Lewis H. Lapham speaks with Edward D. Melillo, author of The Butterfly Effect: Insects and the Making of the Modern World. 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 speaks with Derek W. Black, author of “Schoolhouse Burning: Public Education and the Assault on American Democracy.” 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.