Ada Palmer on Viking Metaphysics, Contingent Moments, and Censorship

Ada Palmer on Viking Metaphysics, Contingent Moments, and Censorship

Ada Palmer is a Renaissance historian at the University of Chicago who studies radical free thought and censorship, composes music, consults on anime and manga, and is the author of the acclaimed Terra Ignota sci-fi series, among many other things.

Tyler sat down with Ada to discuss why living in the Renaissance was worse than living during the Middle Ages, how art protected Florence, why she's reluctant to travel back in time, which method of doing history is currently the most underrated, whose biography she'll write, how we know what old Norse music was like, why women scholars helped us understand Viking metaphysics, why Diderot's Jacques the Fatalist is an interesting work, what people misunderstand about the inquisition(s), why science fiction doesn't have higher social and literary status, which hive she would belong to in Terra Ignota, what the new novel she's writing is about, and more.

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video.

Recorded June 28th, 2023.

Other ways to connect

Photo Credit: Jason Smith

Avsnitt(282)

Henry Oliver on Measure for Measure, Late Bloomers, and the Smartest Writers in English

Henry Oliver on Measure for Measure, Late Bloomers, and the Smartest Writers in English

Sign up for the Chicago CWT Listener Meetup. Henry Oliver is the preeminent literary critic for non-literary nerds. His Substack, The Common Reader, has thousands of subscribers drawn in by Henry's co...

4 Mars 59min

Joe Studwell on Africa, Asia, and What Development Actually Requires

Joe Studwell on Africa, Asia, and What Development Actually Requires

When Tyler called Joe Studwell's How Asia Works "perhaps my favorite economics book of the year" back in 2013, he wasn't alone: it became one of the most influential treatments of industrial policy e...

18 Feb 53min

Andrew Ross Sorkin on Market Bubbles, Banking Rules, and the Real Lessons of 1929

Andrew Ross Sorkin on Market Bubbles, Banking Rules, and the Real Lessons of 1929

Andrew Ross Sorkin sees the crash of 1929 as a tale of excessive leverage and irrational speculation, but Tyler wonders: maybe those sky-high 1929 prices were actually justified given America's remark...

4 Feb 56min

Diarmaid MacCulloch on Christianity, Sex, and Unsettling Settled Facts

Diarmaid MacCulloch on Christianity, Sex, and Unsettling Settled Facts

Tyler considers Diarmaid MacCulloch one of those rare historians whose entire body of work rewards reading. This work includes his award-winning Cranmer biography, his sweeping histories of Christiani...

21 Jan 59min

Brendan Foody on Teaching AI and the Future of Knowledge Work

Brendan Foody on Teaching AI and the Future of Knowledge Work

At 22, Brendan Foody is both the youngest Conversations with Tyler guest ever and the youngest unicorn founder on record. His company Mercor hires the experts who train frontier AI models—from poets g...

7 Jan 1h 1min

Conversations with Tyler 2025 Retrospective

Conversations with Tyler 2025 Retrospective

Help us keep the conversations going in 2026. Donate to Conversations with Tyler today. On this special year-in-review episode, Tyler and producer Jeff Holmes look back on the past year on CWT and mo...

23 Dec 202559min

Alison Gopnik on Childhood Learning, AI as a Cultural Technology, and Rethinking Nature vs. Nurture

Alison Gopnik on Childhood Learning, AI as a Cultural Technology, and Rethinking Nature vs. Nurture

Help us keep the conversations going in 2026. Donate to Conversations with Tyler today. Alison Gopnik is both a psychologist and philosopher at Berkeley, studying how children construct theories of t...

17 Dec 20251h 1min

Gaurav Kapadia on New York City, Investing, and Contemporary Art

Gaurav Kapadia on New York City, Investing, and Contemporary Art

Help us keep the conversations going in 2026. Donate to Conversations with Tyler today. Gaurav Kapadia has deliberately avoided publicity throughout his career in investing, which makes this conversa...

10 Dec 202559min

Populärt inom Utbildning

historiepodden-se
rss-bara-en-till-om-missbruk-medberoende-2
det-skaver
alska-oss
harrisons-dramatiska-historia
nu-blir-det-historia
sektledare
rss-viktmedicinpodden
johannes-hansen-podcast
not-fanny-anymore
roda-vita-rosen
i-vantan-pa-katastrofen
rss-sjalsligt-avkladd
allt-du-velat-veta
rss-basta-livet
rss-om-vi-ska-vara-arliga
sa-in-i-sjalen
rss-max-tant-med-max-villman
rikatillsammans-om-privatekonomi-rikedom-i-livet
rss-pa-insidan-med-bjorn-rudman