KPFA - Letters and Politics

A look at burning political issues and debates and their historical context within the US and worldwide, hosted by Mitch Jeserich. The post Letters and Politics – January 5, 2023 appeared first on KPFA.

Part 1: The History of the Speaker Guest: Steven S. Smith is the Kate M. Gregg Distinguished Professor of Social Sciences and Professor of Political Science at Washington University. He is the author of such books as Politics over Process: Partisan Conflict and Post-Passage Processes in the U.S. Congress and The Senate Syndrome: The Evolution of Procedural Warfare in the Modern U.S. Senate. Part 2:Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations Guest:Robin Waterfield is a British classical scholar, translator, and editor, specializing in Ancient Greek who has tranlator of the recently published Meditations: The Annotated Edition. The post The History of The Speaker and Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations appeared first on KPFA.

Guest: John Nichols of The Nation The post Electing A Speaker appeared first on KPFA.

Guest: Rebecca Wragg Sykes is an archaeologist, author and Honorary Fellow in the School of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology at the University of Liverpool.  Her new book, KINDRED: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art  won the 2021 PEN Hessell-Tiltman prize for history; awarded Book of the Year by Current Archaeology; selected as one of 2021’s 100 Notable Books by The New York Times.  She is co-founder of the influential TrowelBlazers project, highlighting women in archaeology and the earth sciences. The post The Neanderthal: Love, Art & Culture (Re-broadcast) appeared first on KPFA.

Guest: Margaret Burnham set out in 2007 to travel the country to investigate approximately a thousand unsolved racially motivated murders between 1930 and 1954. She has written a book about it called By Hands Now Known: Jim Crow’s Legal Executioners. She and her assistants have also created an on-line archive dedicated to identifying, classifying, and providing factual information and documentation about anti-Black killings in the mid-century South at www.crrjarchive.org The post Uncovering A Thousand Racially Motivated Murders 1930-1954 appeared first on KPFA.

Guest: Ed Yong is a Pulitzer Prize journalist with the Atlantic and author of An Immense World: How Animals Senses Reveal The Hidden Realms Around Us. The post The Diversity of Perception in the Animal Kingdom and How Humans Force Creatures Into an Alien World appeared first on KPFA.

Guest: Joanna Scutts is the author of Hotbed: Bohemian Greenwich Village and the Secret Club that Sparked Modern Feminism. The post Heterodoxy: The Secret Club That Sparked The Feminist Movement appeared first on KPFA.

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 of How Classical Ideas Were Lost and Found. The post How the Islamic Empires Saved the Classical World appeared first on KPFA.

Guest: Bart D. Ehrman is a Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and author of several books including Misquoting Jesus, How Jesus Became God, and his latest, The Triumph of Christianity: How a Forbidden Religion Swept the World. The post The Triumph of Christianity appeared first on KPFA.

Guest: Bart D. Ehrman is the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the author of Journeys to Heaven and Hell: Tours of the Afterlife in the Early Christian Tradition The post Early Christian Texts & The Making of Hell appeared first on KPFA.