Why Armies Stopped Burning Libraries and Weap...

A ten-year-old boy gallops across the Russian steppe on a Kalmyk horse, collecting plants for his father while German settlers starve in earth dugouts along the Volga. Seven years later, that same boy is standing on the deck of Captain Cook's Resolution as it crosses the Antarcti ...  Show more

When the 7.8 magnitude earthquake tore through southeastern Turkey in 2023, the government posted that it would provide translation support in seven languages: Turkish, Arabic, Persian, English, Russian, German, and Pashto. Kurdish, spoken by fifteen million people in the affecte ...  Show more

Books are often viewed as the pinnacle of civilization; war, on the other hand, is where civilization breaks down. What happens when these two forces encounter one another? In this episode, Jacke talks to esteemed literary historian Andrew Pettegree about his new book, The Book a ...  Show more

During World War II, as American publishers sought ways to support the troops abroad, they began printing small, pocket-sized books that soldiers could fit anywhere. In When Books Went to War, Molly Guptill Manning tells the story of these little printed editions and how they ser ...  Show more

In the first episode of 2023, Kate Whiting speaks to academics and authors Professor Andrew Pettegree and Dr Arthur der Weduwen about their book The Library: A Fragile History. They discuss why, despite our love of collecting books, they have often been neglected and become tools ...  Show more

Author, actor and senior fellow at the Modern War Institute Max Brooks joins Dan to discuss asymmetrical warfare and related societal issues. 1. "On War" by Gen. Carl von Clausewitz 2. "The Art of War" by Sun Tsu 3. "War and Anti-War: Survival at the Dawn of the 21st Century" by ...  Show more