Recall This Book Podcast Por Elizabeth Ferry and John Plotz arte de portada

Recall This Book

Recall This Book

De: Elizabeth Ferry and John Plotz
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Free-ranging discussion of books from the past that cast a sideways light on today's world.Elizabeth Ferry and John Plotz Arte Ciencias Sociales Historia y Crítica Literaria Mundial
Episodios
  • 168 Shredding Capitalism with Sven Beckert (Paul Kramer, JP)

    168 Shredding Capitalism with Sven Beckert (Paul Kramer, JP)
    Apr 2 2026
    John is joined by the brilliant and affable Paul Kramer of Vanderbilt (The Blood of Government) to discuss Capitalism: A Global History (Penguin, 2025) by Sven Beckert, Laird Bell Professor of History at Harvard University. With Christine A. Desan (Recall This Book adores her) he is the co-director of the Program on the Study of Capitalism at Harvard University. This builds on his marvelous previous work about the global cotton trade. John wants to know about the importance of the state as money-maker and underpinner of markets. Paul asks about the key historical ruptures; the conversation goes back a millennium to traders in Aden and in China. Together Paul and Sven speculate on the role violence plays inside the “free” market that capitalist exchange established and now somewhat remarkably sustains. The singular turning-point of the late 19th century (which Sven decided to present in three interwoven chapters) comes in for sustained attention. Mentioned in the Episode Christine Desan, Making Money: Coin, Currency, and the Coming of Capitalism (2014) Ursula Le Guin “We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable — but then, so did the divine right of kings.” (National Book Foundation Medal speech 2014) Ferdinand Braudel Afterthoughts on Material Civilization and Capitalism (1979) Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (1944) Listen and Read here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    43 m
  • 167* Addiction with Gina Turrigiano (EF, JP)

    167* Addiction with Gina Turrigiano (EF, JP)
    Mar 26 2026
    In Recall This Book's second episode (January 2019) John and Elizabeth spoke with their brilliant Brandeis colleague, the MacArthur-winning neuroscientist Gina Turrigiano, about a number of different facets of addiction. The conversation seems as timely as ever. What makes an addiction to a morning constitutional different from–or similar to–an addiction to Fentanyl? What are the biological and social factors to consider? Should the addict be thought of in binary terms, or addiction as a state that people move into and out of? They contemplate these questions through biological, anthropological, and literary lenses, drawing on Marc Lewis, Angela Garcia, and Thomas de Quincey. Late in the episode, there’s also a Sprockets joke. Then, in Recallable Books, Gina recommends David Linden’s The Compass of Pleasure, Elizabeth recommends When I Wear My Alligator Boots by Shaylih Muehlmann, and John recommends Sam Quinones’s Dreamland. Discussed in this episode: Marc Lewis, The Biology of Desire: Why Addiction Is Not a Disease Angela Garcia, The Pastoral Clinic: Addiction and Dispossession Along the Rio Grande Thomas de Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium Eater: Being an Extract from the Life of a Scholar David Linden, The Compass of Pleasure: How Our Brains Make Fatty Foods, Orgasm, Exercise, Marijuana, Generosity, Vodka, Learning, and Gambling Feel So Good Shaylih Muehlmann, When I Wear My Alligator Boots: Narco-Culture in the U.S. Mexico Borderlands Sam Quinones, Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    47 m
  • 166 Imperial Depths: Mark Letteney and Matthew Larsen on the Roman Prison System (JP)

    166 Imperial Depths: Mark Letteney and Matthew Larsen on the Roman Prison System (JP)
    Mar 12 2026
    The notion of abolishing prisons strikes some as an impossible dream: could we could reasonably conceive of a society that responded to harm without the possibility of long-term confinement in purpose-built institutions? To others, we already have a template. Didn’t Michel Foucault long ago show us that prisons as they exist now–in all their horror, in all their commitment not just to jail people before trial but also to imprison them afterwards–come about only in the modern episteme, concomitant with capitalism and all sorts of attendant evils? Actually, nope. Prisons are as old as the Romans and very likely much older than that. In Ancient Mediterranean Incarceration (California, 2025). Mark Letteney (a U Washington historian who wrote The Christianization of Knowledge in Late Antiquity)directs excavations in a legionary amphitheater) and Matthew Larsen (University of Copenhagen, author of Gospels before the Book) document an ancient and durable prison system system with five key features: Centrality, surveillance, separation depth, and punitive variability. Their RTB conversation explores key aspects of that system and its present-day legacy or parallels. Yet it ends on a note of cautious optimism from Letteney: just because we don’t find a prison-free world in ancient Rome is no reason to give up the struggle. Whatever better solution to societal safety and rehabilitation awaits us in the future, it must be something we ourselves set out to build anew. Mentioned Michel Foucault’s foundational Discipline and Punish (1975) Adam Gopknik reviews Ancient Mediterranean Incarceration in The New Yorker The Rules of Ulpian (3rd century jurist) Wengrow and Graeber’s foundational and heavily debated The Dawn of Everything (2021) Spencer Weinreich’s work on solitary confinement) Erving Goffman Stigma (1963) and Asylums (1961) Livy (eg in his History of Rome on prisons and prisoners Who  Would Believe a Prisoner? Edited by Michelle Daniel Jones and Elizabeth Angeline Nelson Libanius (on the abuse of Prisoners) Fyodor Dostoyevsky. The House of the Dead Samuel Delany Tales of Neveryon Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    50 m
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