Letters and Politics

The History of The Speaker and Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations

Part 1: The History of the Speaker Guest: Steven S. Smith is the Kate M. Gregg Distinguished Professor of Social Sciences and Professor of Political Science at Washington University. He is the author of such books as Politics over Process: Partisan Conflict and Post-Passage Processes in the U.S. Congress and The Senate Syndrome: The Evolution … Continued


Guest: Rebecca Wragg Sykes is an archaeologist, author and Honorary Fellow in the School of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology at the University of Liverpool.  Her new book, KINDRED: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art  won the 2021 PEN Hessell-Tiltman prize for history; awarded Book of the Year by Current Archaeology; selected as one of 2021’s 100 Notable Books by … Continued


Guest: Margaret Burnham set out in 2007 to travel the country to investigate approximately a thousand unsolved racially motivated murders between 1930 and 1954. She has written a book about it called By Hands Now Known: Jim Crow’s Legal Executioners. She and her assistants have also created an on-line archive dedicated to identifying, classifying, and … Continued