Pablo F. Gomez, "Bloody Numbers: The Early Atlantic Slave Trade and the Invention of Modern Corporeality" (U Chicago Press, 2026)
In my conversation with Professor Pablo F. Gómez about his new book, Bloody Numbers: The Early Atlantic Slave Trade and the Invention of Modern Corporeality, published by the University of Chicago Pre...
20 Sep 52min
Xiaochang Li, "Divination Engines: Natural Language Processing, Artificial Intelligence, and the Making of Algorithmic Culture" (U Chicago Press, 2026)
Since the advent of computers, society has fantasized about conversing with machines. In Divination Engines: Natural Language Processing, Artificial Intelligence, and the Making of Algorithmic Culture...
2 Sep 40min
Richard Elwes, "Huge Numbers: A Story of Counting Ambitiously, from 4 1/2 to Fish 7" (Basic Books, 2026)
What if, every time you wanted to write down 1,000,000, you had to draw a picture of a god? And what if that number were the biggest you had a symbol for? If you were doing math in ancient Egypt, th...
22 Maj 1h 3min
Drew M. Dalton, "The Matter of Evil: From Speculative Realism to Ethical Pessimism" (Northwestern UP, 2024)
Most of us today would assume that morality and ethics, being value propositions, are questions for inspired leaders, religious creeds, poets—in other words, for the humanities. But what if I told you...
17 Maj 1h 10min
Counter-Revolutionary Puzzles with Guillermo Badia
In this episode Pat speaks with Dr Guillermo Badia. Dr Guillermo Badia is a philosopher working in logic. His research interests are logic in computer science, semiring-based logics and models of comp...
11 Maj 29min
Antony Valentini, "Beyond the Quantum: A Quest for the Origin and Hidden Meaning of Quantum Mechanics" (Oxford UP, 2026)
Based on decades of research, Beyond the Quantum: A Quest for the Origin and Hidden Meaning of Quantum Mechanics (Oxford UP, 2026) offers a panoramic rethink of quantum physics, with potentially revol...
5 Maj 1h 30min
Raffaele Danna, "The Craft of Indo-Arabic Numerals: How Practical Arithmetic Shaped Commerce and Mathematics in Western Europe, 1200–1600" (Harvard UP, 2026)
In the thirteenth-century Mediterranean, commerce transformed as merchants shifted from Roman to Indo-Arabic numerals—an alternative that better facilitated complex calculations. It has long been know...
28 Apr 1h 6min
Antonio Padilla, "Fantastic Numbers and Where to Find Them: A Cosmic Quest from Zero to Infinity" (FSG,2022)
A fun, dazzling exploration of the strange numbers that illuminate the ultimate nature of reality. For particularly brilliant theoretical physicists like James Clerk Maxwell, Paul Dirac, or Albert Ei...
15 Feb 1h 2min
