On Michel Foucault's "Discipline and Punish"

In Gems and the New Science: Matter and Value in the Scientific Revolution (U Chicago Press, 2026), Dr. Michael Bycroft argues that gems were connected to major developments in the “new science” between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. As he explains, precious and semiprec ...  Show more

The introduction of the principle of women's reproductive liberty in France, tentatively by the family planning movement after 1960 and explicitly by the women's liberation movement after 1970, marked a deep shift, transforming public discourses. Yet this principle remained fierc ...  Show more

We couldn't put together a new episode for you this week, so we thought we'd unlock an old Patreon exclusive! Thanks to everyone who helped us pick which one by voting in our Twitter poll. We'll be back with a brand new ep next Monday.

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In th ...

What if you suddenly discovered a cherished member of your family was a Nazi? How would you make sense of the code of silence that had kept an uncomfortable reality at bay? How would you resolve the wartime suffering of your family with their moral culpability for the Holocaust? ...  Show more

The Ancient Romans are often thought of as ahead of their time. They invented concrete, sophisticated road systems and even underfloor heating.

But their approach to murder is starkly different to how the modern world recognises it, and frankly it’s a bit weird. Thes ...

"It is directly obvious," said Virginia Woolf after reading Crime and Punishment, "that [Dostoevsky] is the greatest writer ever born." In this episode, Jacke takes a look at the classic novel of murder, guilt, and redemption, including the letter Dostoevsky wrote proposing his b ...  Show more