A look at burning political issues and debates and their historical context within the US and worldwide, hosted by Mitch Jeserich.

A look at burning political issues and debates and their historical context within the US and worldwide, hosted by Mitch Jeserich.

A look at burning political issues and debates and their historical context within the US and worldwide, hosted by Mitch Jeserich.

Today we are in conversation with Joan Watts and Anne Watts who have collected, curated, and edited the Letters of his father, Alan Watts.

Alan Watts is best known as an interpreter of Zen Buddhism in particular and of Indian and Chinese philosophy in general. He earned the reputation of being one of the most original and unfettered philosophers of the twentieth century. He was the author of several books, including The Way of Zen, The Wisdom of Insecurity, The Meaning of Happiness, Psychotherapy East and West, The Book, This Is It, The Joyous Cosmology, In My Own Way, and Tao, the Watercourse Way (with Chungliang Al Huang). He died in 1973.

About The Collected Letters of Alan Watts

His engaging letters cover a vast range of subject matter, with recipients ranging from High Church clergy to high priests of psychedelics, government officials, publishers, critics, family, and fans. They include C. G. Jung, Henry Miller, Gary Snyder, Aldous Huxley, Reinhold Niebuhr, Timothy Leary, Joseph Campbell, and James Hillman. Watts’s letters were curated by two of his daughters, Joan Watts and Anne Watts, who have added rich, behind-the-scenes biographical commentary.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A look at burning political issues and debates and their historical context within the US and worldwide, hosted by Mitch Jeserich.

A look at burning political issues and debates and their historical context within the US and worldwide, hosted by Mitch Jeserich.

Mitch Jeserich is in conversation with Professor Kyle Harper to talk about one of the most consequential chapters of human history: the fall of the Roman Empire. Central to this issue are question such as how does an empire fall? What's the role of climate change and pandemic diseases in the collapse of Rome's power.

Guest: Kyle Harper is a historian of the classical world and the Senior Vice President and Provost at his alma mater, the University of Oklahoma. He is the author of several books including The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire.

 

About The Fate of Rome:

The book explores how the fate of Rome was decided not just by emperors, soldiers, and barbarians but also by volcanic eruptions, solar cycles, climate instability, and devastating viruses and bacteria. Kyle Harper takes us from Rome’s pinnacle in the second century, when the empire seemed an invincible superpower, to its unraveling by the seventh century, when Rome was politically fragmented and materially depleted. Harper describes how the Romans were resilient in the face of enormous environmental stress, until the besieged empire could no longer withstand the combined challenges of a “little ice age” and recurrent outbreaks of bubonic plague.

 

A look at burning political issues and debates and their historical context within the US and worldwide, hosted by Mitch Jeserich.

A look at burning political issues and debates and their historical context within the US and worldwide, hosted by Mitch Jeserich.

A look at burning political issues and debates and their historical context within the US and worldwide, hosted by Mitch Jeserich.