"It struck me . . . how profoundly this gleaming white Renaissance tomb was unrelated to the book I had just been writing, to the nation of the Africa and to Augustine, who lived his life and thought his thoughts and loved his family and his friends and fought against his foes in North Africa."

A great pleasure to have Professor Josiah Osgood of Georgetown University on the program to speak about his new book on Cicero. Link to full conversation below.

A great pleasure to speak to author and journalist @ntabrizy.bsky.social about her new book For the Sun After Long Nights about the women-led uprising in Iran.

My conversation with author Geoffrey Wawro on his new book The Vietnam War: A Military History. Now on Substack.

I welcome @keachhagey.bsky.social to discuss her new book, The Optimist: Sam Altman, OpenAI, and the Race to Invent the Future.

My interview with James Romm, author of Plato & the Tyrant. Now on Substack.

Very pleased to have @josephtorigian.bsky.social on the program to discuss his new book The Party's Interests Come First, a biography of Xi Jinping's father.

My full discussion with Lincoln's Peace author Michael Vorenberg @mikevorenberg.bsky.social on Substack: open.substack.com/pub/johnbatc...

A pleasure to speak to my friend and colleague Craig Unger @craigunger.bsky.social. The subject? Donald Trump, the Russian mob, and 1980s New York City real estate. open.substack.com/pub/johnbatc...

Russell Shorto on the program to discuss his new book, Taking Manhattan: The Extraordinary Events That Created New York and Shaped America.

Historian and author Richard Carwardine on the program to discuss his new book, Righteous Strife: How Warring Religious Nationalists Forged Lincoln's Union.

I speak to Richard Reinsch of the Civitas Institute on the late philosopher and author of The Gulag Archipelago Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Full conversation and interview free on Substack.

"We have a space program. The dinosaurs didn't have a space program." Professor Richard P. Binzel of @mitofficial.bsky.social and colleagues search the sky for asteroids in an effort to prevent their impact with Earth.

It is approximately the year 1200 AD. A man is in a tavern having a very good time, drinking heavily, and suddenly he gets a message written in runes on a piece of wood. The message he writes in return, I'm told by the author Eleanor Barraclough, doesn't make any sense.

On Boulevard des Capucines, a studio is opening an exhibit of paintings by men who don't have an organizing principle yet. They call themselves Société anonyme. They are Degas, Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, Sisily, Cezanne—and especially Manet.

"It is 1888, Kiev. A new statue is raised. The statue is to a man named Khmelnytsky, a hero to the Ukrainians, to the Crimea and Cossacks, to the Russians—even to the Soviets in the future." Interview with Eugene Finkel @efinkel.bsky.social on his new book: Intent to Destroy.

"Goddess, sing of the cataclysmic wrath / of great Achilles..." It was a great pleasure to speak to Professor @emilyrcwilson.bsky.social Emily Wilson last year about her new translation of Homer's Iliad, antiquity's greatest literary landmark.

A story that needs retelling. My interview with James Holland, historian and author of Cassino '44: The Brutal Battle for Rome.

"The only conceivable reason to go to Mars, actually, is to set up a second civilization and start to learn how to become a multi-planetary species." Discussing Reentry, the new book by Eric Berger -- our conversation, free on Substack @sciguyspace.bsky.social

"It is 1762. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania." My interview with Richard Munson, author of Ingenious: A Biography of Benjamin Franklin, Scientist

"It is September of 1939, and there is war between London and Berlin. Randolph Churchill (son of Winston) goes to dinner with a young woman named Pamela Digby. He asks her to marry, though he has never met her before. The surprise is, she says yes. She is 19 years old." @soniapurnell.bsky.social

Keeping the Faith: God, Democracy, and the Trial That Riveted a Nation—a new story and book by about the Scopes Trial of 1925. It is dramatic and sensationally important for the understanding of the culture in the 1920s. One hundred years, it is still debatable.

"It is late 1932. A young man, Ronald Reagan, is visiting Springfield, Illinois where his father Jack is running a shoe store to maintain what he can of an income for the family. It is the very dark days of the United States in what becomes the Great Depression." @maxboot.bsky.social

I welcome my colleague Craig Unger to discuss his new book Den of Spies: Reagan, Carter, and the Secret History of the Treason That Stole the White House. This is the "October Surprise" legend of the 1980 presidential election reexamined after decades of research. Full interview on Substack: