History Is Written by the Winners, and the Losers

Guest: Daniel Woolf, Professor of History and Principal Emeritus at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, and author of "A Concise History of History: Global Historiography from Antiquity to the Present"

The writing of history is not like an onion, where we can peel back layers to get at the truth, but more like garlic, where competing "cloves," or versions, grow up together. And, despite the aphorism, sometimes the history written by the losers outlasts the history written by the winners. Woolf tackles historians' attempts throughout time to get the story "right."

 

Clock Mirage

Guest: Joseph Mazur, Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at Marlboro College and author of "The Clock Mirage: Our Myth of Measured Time"

From the beginning of time (if it had a beginning at all), humans have been keenly interested in the concept of measured time. In 1884, the establishment of the Greenwich Meridian was supposed to standardize time across the globe. Unfortunately, a concept of clean-cut time zones doesn’t account for our biological circadian rhythms, what happens in outer space, or how time seems to pass differently as we age.