Reckoning with Jason Herbert

News broke yesterday of Pope Francis' death at the age of  88. Matt Gabriele joins in to talk about the man, the history of the papacy, and what comes next.About our guest:Matthew Gabriele is a professor of medieval studies in the Department of Religion and Culture at Virginia Tech. His research and teaching generally explore religion, violence, nostalgia, and apocalypse, whether manifested in the Middle Ages or the modern world. This includes events and ideas such as the Crusades, the so-called “Terrors of the Year 1000,” and medieval religious and political life. He has also presented and published on modern medievalism, such as recent white supremacist appropriations of the Middle Ages and pop culture phenomena like Game of Thrones and the video game Dragon Age.Gabriele has published numerous academic articles and several books, including An Empire of Memory: The Legend of Charlemagne, the Franks, and Jerusalem before the First Crusade, which received the Southeastern Medieval Association’s Best First Book in 2013. He has also presented at dozens of national and international conferences and has given invited talks at Harvard, Princeton, Georgetown, the University of California-Berkeley, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the University of Virginia, the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, and Westfälische Wilhelms Üniversität-Münster.Gabriele is a regular contributor to Forbes.com; his public writing has appeared in such places as The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Daily Beast, Slate, and The Roanoke Times; and interviews with him have aired locally, nationally, and internationally. He completed a bachelor’s degree in history at the University of Delaware and a master’s degree and a doctorate in medieval history at the University of California, Berkeley.

Today astrophysicist Dr. Mario Livio and Nobel-winning chemist Dr. Jack Szostak drop in to talk about the search for extraterrestrial life.About our guests:Dr. Mario Livio is an internationally known astrophysicist, best-selling author, and popular speaker. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. ​Dr. Livio has published more than 500 scientific articles. He has made significant theoretical contributions to topics ranging from cosmology, supernova explosions, and black holes to extrasolar planets and the emergence of life in the universe. He has received numerous awards and recognitions for his research, including having been selected as the “Carnegie Centenary Professor” by the universities of Scotland in 2003, and as the “Danz Distinguished Lecturer” by the University of Washington in 2006. Dr. Livio is also the author of eight popular science books, the most recent in collaboration with Nobel laureate Jack Szostak. His bestselling book The Golden Ratio won him the Peano Prize in 2003 and the International Pythagoras Prize in 2004, as the best popular book on mathematics. His book Is God A Mathematician? inspired the NOVA program “The Great Math Mystery,” which was nominated for an EMMY in 2016. His book Brilliant Blunders was selected by The Washington Post as one of the Notable Books of 2013. His book Galileo and the Science Deniers appeared in May 2020, and was one of the finalists for the Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science. Dr. Jack Szostak is a  biologist, Nobel Prize laureate, university professor at the University of Chicago, former professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School, and Alexander Rich Distinguished Investigator at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston. Szostak has made significant contributions to the field of genetics. His achievement helped scientists to map the location of genes in mammals and to develop techniques for manipulating genes. His research findings in this area are also instrumental to the Human Genome Project. He was awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, along with Elizabeth Blackburn and Carol W. Greider, for the discovery of how chromosomes are protected by telomeres.

We're a couple days removed from yet another on campus shooting. Sasha, Cari, and I ask what the hell is wrong with America and how did we get here.About our guests: Sasha Abramsky is The Nation's Western correspondent. He is the author of several books, including The American Way of Poverty, The House of Twenty Thousand Books, Little Wonder: The Fabulous Story of Lottie Dod, the World's First Female Sports Superstar, and most recently Chaos Comes Calling: The Battle Against the Far-Right Takeover of Small-Town America. Follow him on Bluesky at @sashaabramsky.bsky.social. Dr. Cari Babitzke is a historian focusing on gun politics in the latter half of the 20th century.

Talking about Bobby Sands, the Troubles, the Irish Republican Army, and the Good Friday Agreement with John M. Burney and Andrew J. Auge.

Today Sasha Abramsky joins in for the first time to talk about why small towns are so susceptible to far right rhetoric and if there is hope for the future.About our guest:Sasha Abramsky is The Nation's Western correspondent. He is the author of several books, including The American Way of Poverty, The House of Twenty Thousand Books, Little Wonder: The Fabulous Story of Lottie Dod, the World's First Female Sports Superstar, and most recently Chaos Comes Calling: The Battle Against the Far-Right Takeover of Small-Town America. Follow him on Bluesky at @sashaabramsky.bsky.social.

The gang is back together as we return to Indiana Jones franchise to talk about archaeology, British imperialism, representation of India on film, and why Harrison Ford never looked cooler than he did on the bridge. 

Physicist Matt Strassler drops in to talk about the origins of the universe and how we how what we know.About  our guest:Dr. Matt Strassler is a  theoretical physicist and writer. His research over the past thirty years has mainly been related mainly to the Large Hadron Collider, though he has written many papers on a wide variety of topics in string theory, quantum field theory and particle physics. He has recently completed a new book, called “Waves in an Impossible Sea“, in which, without assuming readers know any science or math, he explains modern physics and its centrality in human experience.

This week Kevin Smokler drops in to talk about The Breakfast Club, the Brat Pack, John Hughes, and the legacy of 80s teen movies. About our guest:Kevin Smokler is a writer, documentary filmmaker and event host focused on our relationship as human beings with pop culture. His most recent book BREAK THE FRAME: CONVERSATIONS WITH WOMEN FILMMAKERS  contains 24 career-retrospective conversations with directors behind box office phenomenon like Captain Marvel, Oscar winners like Free Solo and the filmmakers who launched actors such as America Ferrera, Paul Rudd, Ryan Gosling and Jennifer Lawrence. His previous books, BRAT PACK AMERICA is a love letter to teen movies of the 1980s. His 2013 essay collection PRACTICAL CLASSICS is a 50 book attempt to reread one’s high school reading list as an adult.

April 1 marks the beginning of Autism Awareness Month in the U.S. and the U.K. so I invited neuroscientist Dr. Gina Rippon on the pod to talk about what autism is, the history of its diagnosis, and how women and girls have been overlooked in autism research.About our guest: Professor Gina Rippon is Professor Emeritus of Cognitive NeuroImaging at Aston University in the UK. Her research involves the use of state-of-the-art brain imaging techniques to investigate developmental disorders such as autism, profiling different patterns of brain activity in autistic children and adults. Her current research explores the under-recognition of autism in women and girls, especially in neuroscience research. Her new book on this topic: The Lost Girls of Autism (UK)/Off the Spectrum (US) is released in April 2025.

Talking today about why we have to keep fighting and why we must move forward. Because it's not about us.