Of all Shakespeare’s plays, perhaps none is stranger than “Macbeth”— a parable on power rife with supernatural elements. But according to texts from the 11th century, this tragedy has its roots in reality. What’s more, other accounts...

John Hope Franklin, a descendent of slaves and recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his work in civil rights, talks about his autobiography

Bill Gates talks best (and worst) case scenarios for the coronavirus pandemic in the months ahead, explaining the challenges of reducing virus transmission, providing an update on promising vaccine candidates, offering his thoughts on...

To move forward in the United States, we must look back and confront the difficult history that has shaped widespread injustice. Revisiting a significant yet overlooked piece of the past, Hasan Kwame Jeffries emphasizes the need to weave...

Scott Ellsworth is a writer and historian based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he also teaches at the University of Michigan. His new book, Midnight on the Potomac: The Last Year of the Civil War, the Lincoln Assassination, and the...

Joanna Sliwa is a historian, educator, and author working at the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, where she administers academic programs on Holocaust studies. She co-authored The Counterfeit Countess: The Jewish...

Edward Ayers is Tucker-Boatwright Professor of the Humanities at the University of Richmond, where he is President Emeritus. President Barack Obama awarded him the National Humanities Medal in 2013, hailing his "commitment to making...

Native American representation in film and TV used to be confined to Westerns and storylines of defeat. Today, a new wave of Native American comedies, written and created by Native peoples, are taking back their narratives. Shows like...

Dr. Forrester introduces archeologists and historians. She explains what each does and how they piece together clues to give us a better understanding of the past.

Historian and Chinese Studies specialist Karl Gerth (UCSD) discusses how he will never run out of interesting questions to explore involving both China and the rest of the world.

Nancy MacLean is an award-winning scholar of the twentieth-century U.S., whose most recent book, Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America, has been described by Publishers Weekly as “a...

Historian David Armitage (Harvard) reflects upon his roundabout route to becoming a leading intellectual historian.

University of Oxford historian Sir John Elliott describes why the search for historical objectivity implies that it is important for all historians to have one foot in the past and one foot in the present.

UC Berkeley historian and Byzantine specialist Maria Mavroudi gives her candid view that a historian’s principal task is to try to recover as much of the truth as possible despite the fact that we can naturally never recover the whole...

Historian John Elliott (Oxford) describes the advantages and disadvantages of modern technology's effect on the historical enterprise. While acknowledging the benefits of digitization, he emphasizes the irreplaceable value of physically...

Historian David Cannadine, Princeton University, uses the example of his popular book, The Undivided Past, as a window to demonstrate his view of the societal role of history: that historical understanding can be a worthy antidote to...

Historian David Armitage (Harvard) tackles the tricky question of how historical inquiry can better inform public policy.

Princeton University historian David Cannadine describes his belief that the standard historical categorisations of religion, nation, class, gender, race or civilisation that have been often used to understand history might not actually...

Intellectual historian Darrin McMahon (Dartmouth College) gives us a personal taste of what intellectual history is uniquely qualified to address, and what attracts him to the field.

Historian John Elliott, University of Oxford, describes how historians studying societies other than their own need to balance objective assessment and societal assimilation, a balancing act that invariably brings with it a multitude of...

Princeton historian of science Michael Gordin describes a set of attitudes that most practicing scientists have towards historians, philosophers and sociologists of science, and outlines ways in which appreciating the past might help...

How does congress become divided? How did nationalism affect India at that time?<br/>
Yasmin Khan on the Indian Partition, Part 3

Did the British have any chance of maintaining the Raj in 1945 after the second world war? What was on the minds of the British decision makers when faced with counter insurgency in India compared to talking of liberating Europeans...

How is African heritage handled today in terms of preservation? How are communities in Africa preserving their history?<br/>
Africa, The Unknown History of Humankind, Part 4