Interviews

Shakespeare's Philosophy
Shakespeare's Philosophy
Although he died nearly 400 years ago, William Shakespeare’s legacy continues to resonate today. His works, which include 37 plays, five poems, and 154 sonnets, strike a chord with modern... Read more...
John Darnton
Becoming Darwin: John Darnton on the Man Behind Evolution
On the morning of October 2, 1836, HMS Beagle sailed into Falmouth harbor, and Charles Darwin stepped ashore after five years at sea. He was twenty-seven years old and carried... Read more...
John Cottingham
John Cottingham on René Descartes's Influence on Philosophy: He Thought, Therefore He Was
On the night of November 10, 1619, a young French soldier named René Descartes sat alone in a small stove-heated room in Ulm, Germany, and had three dreams in succession... Read more...
Tim Benton
The Shape Of Things That Came: Tim Benton’s Analysis Of Le Corbusier's Audacious Designs
In 1925, Le Corbusier unveiled a plan for the center of Paris that stopped the city in its tracks. The Plan Voisin, named after the automobile manufacturer who sponsored it,... Read more...
It's Magic: Graham Farmelo on Paul Dirac's “Remarkable” Life and Work
It's Magic: Graham Farmelo on Paul Dirac's “Remarkable” Life and Work
In 1928, a shy and notoriously taciturn physicist sitting in Cambridge produced an equation so strange and mathematically elegant that even he hesitated to believe what it implied. Paul Dirac... Read more...
Karen Kleinfelder
Surviving Picasso: Karen Kleinfelder Paints A Portrait of The Artist's Lasting Legacy
In the spring of 1907, Pablo Picasso locked himself in his studio at the Bateau-Lavoir in Montmartre and refused to let almost anyone in. He had been working for months... Read more...
Frank Cioffi
Analyze This: Frank Cioffi On Freud's “Pseudo-Science”
In the autumn of 1909, Sigmund Freud arrived in America for the only time in his life, stepping off a ship in New York harbor to find himself received not... Read more...
It's All Relative: Ezra Newman On Einstein's Groundbreaking Theory
It's All Relative: Ezra Newman On Einstein's Groundbreaking Theory
In the spring of 1955, Albert Einstein refused surgery. He was seventy-six years old, and an aortic aneurysm had begun to rupture; his doctors at Princeton Hospital told him the... Read more...
John Lucas
"A Strange Piece of Work:" John Lucas On Complexities of Mind, Machines and Gödel
In 1951, Kurt Gödel stood at a podium at Brown University to deliver the Einstein Award lecture and made a claim that went considerably beyond mathematics. Drawing on his own... Read more...
Joan Klingel Ray
Becoming Jane: Joan Klingel Ray on Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility
In the winter of 1797, the publisher Thomas Cadell received a letter offering him the manuscript of a novel called "First Impressions." The letter came not from the author but... Read more...
Allan Schore
Allan Schore On Freud's Work: It's All in "The Right Mind"
In the autumn of 1895, Sigmund Freud sat down to write what he called his Project for a Scientific Psychology, an attempt to ground the emerging science of the mind... Read more...
Jerry Fodor
Doubting Darwin: Jerry Fodor On What Darwin Got Wrong
On the morning of October 2, 1836, a 27-year-old naturalist stepped off a ship at Falmouth after nearly five years at sea and went straight home to bed. Charles Darwin... Read more...