Episodes

6 days ago
6 days ago
A conversation with Alasdair Grant (University of Hamburg) about the captivity and enslavement that many Greeks (Romaioi) experienced in the late medieval period, a period of state collapse during which they were subject to Italian and Turkish raids and attacks. We talk about the differences between captivity and enslavement, the prospects for being ransomed, and the religious basis of one's legal status. The conversation is based on Alasdair's book, Greek Captives and Mediterranean Slavery, 1260-1460 (University of Edinburgh Press 2024), which is freely available online here.

Thursday Jun 12, 2025
Thursday Jun 12, 2025
A conversation with Ioanna Sitaridou (University of Cambridge) about a Greek language (Romeyka) still spoken in northwestern Turkey, though now endangered, whose grammar retains interesting archaic features. The ancestors of its current speakers were not exchanged in 1923 because they were Muslim; the primary language in their communities today is Turkish. We talk about Romeyka itself, why it was not impacted by the standardization of modern Greek, and the ethical and political care that field-work must take. See here for the Romeyka Project. For Ioanna's study of its grammar, see her article 'The Romeyka Infinitive: Continuity, Contact and Change in the Hellenic Varieties of Pontus,' Diachronica 31:1 (2014) 23-73.

Thursday May 29, 2025
137. Conspiracy theories and the deep state, now and then, with Winston Berg
Thursday May 29, 2025
Thursday May 29, 2025
Winston Berg is a political scientist (University of Chicago) who studies modern American conspiracy theories about politics and the deep state; his dissertation studied the movement known as QAnon. Given our political moment, I thought it would be interesting to discuss with him the different contours and valences that conspiracy theories and deep state notions took in the east Roman polity and in the United States. Check out Winston's recent article 'Origins of the “Deep State” Trope,' Critical Review 35:4 (2023) 281-318.

Thursday May 15, 2025
136. The federal assault on American research universities, with Clifford Ando
Thursday May 15, 2025
Thursday May 15, 2025
A conversation with Cliff Ando (University of Chicago) about the revenue models of American research universities and the dangers to advanced research posed by the freezes recently placed on federal funding. While the biggest cuts are to scientific and medical research, the humanities will also be significantly impacted. Cliff has published a number of op-ed articles on what is happening and how universities should respond; see, for example, here.

Thursday May 01, 2025
135. Latin literature in late antiquity, with Gavin Kelly
Thursday May 01, 2025
Thursday May 01, 2025
A conversation with Gavin Kelly (University of Edinburgh) about the corpus of Latin literature from antiquity down to the present, where we discuss the reasons why most scholars focus on the period before 200 AD, why late antiquity is overlooked (despite having some first rate authors), and what can be done about that. Similar issues, we find, emerge from the study of Greek literature too. The conversation is based on Gavin's recent study of 'Periodisations' in R. K. Gibson and C. L. Whitton, eds., The Cambridge Critical Guide to Latin Literature (Cambridge 2024) 97-157.

Thursday Apr 17, 2025
Thursday Apr 17, 2025
A conversation with Tina Sessa (The Ohio State University) and Marion Kruse (University of Cincinnati) on the process of peer-review in the humanities: what it's for, how it can be done well, and where it can go awry. The conversation is based on many decades of collective experience of peer-review, on all sides of the process.

Thursday Apr 03, 2025
133. Taste, meals, and food culture, with Adam Morin
Thursday Apr 03, 2025
Thursday Apr 03, 2025
A conversation with Adam Morin (University of Ioannina) about categories of taste, the meal structure, and the food and ingredients that east Romans ate. What foods were prized and what looked down upon? How do we know what they ate? What do we know about individual preferences? The conversation is based on Adam's dissertation, Food and Food Culture in the Byzantine Empire, Seventh to Fifteenth Centuries (Queen's University, 2024).

Thursday Mar 20, 2025
132. Who was Allah before Islam?, with Ahmad Al-Jallad
Thursday Mar 20, 2025
Thursday Mar 20, 2025
A conversation with Ahmad Al-Jallad (The Ohio State University) about the languages and inscriptions of pre-Islamic Arabia, our main contemporary source for life, death, and worship before the time of the Prophet Muhammad. We talk about field surveys in search of inscriptions and what they tell us about Allah and other Arabian deities in the early centuries of the first millennium. You can find his work on academia.edu (here) and some of his lectures are posted online. The article on which this conversation is based has not yet been published (its provisional title is "Ancient Allah: An Epigraphic Reconstruction"). You can access the Online Corpus of the Inscriptions of Ancient North Arabia (OCIANA) here.

Thursday Mar 06, 2025
Thursday Mar 06, 2025
A conversation with Sverrir Jakobsson (University of Iceland) about the experiences of Northmen -- especially Varangians -- who traveled to Constantinople and the south and returned home with stories, swords, riches, and prestige. The conversation is based on Sverrir's book The Varangians: In God’s Holy Fire (Palgrave 2020). Instead of my usual intro, Sverrir and I discuss some odd parallels in the histories of Greece and Iceland.

Thursday Feb 20, 2025
Thursday Feb 20, 2025
A conversation with Johanna Hanink (Brown University) on Greek literature (ancient, modern, and in-between), on publishing outside one's main area of academic expertise, and on podcasting. Johanna is a classics professor who has also written on modern Greek culture and literature, and is the host of the new academic podcast Lesche: Ancient Greece, New Ideas. She recently translated Andreas Karkavitsas' The Archaeologist and Select Sea Stories (Penguin Books 2021). Her personal website is here, where you can find links to her many projects and interests.