The Greek philosopher Plato is famous for writing his teachings in the form of dialogues. But there are additionally a series of seven letters attributed to Plato. Over the centuries much ink has been spilt in arguments over their authenticity. My guest today argues that these letters are actually epistolary philosophical novel which are if nothing else a “ripping great yarn”.

“In the pages of Plato’s letters,” writes Ariel Helfer, “we find Plato the teacher, the counselor, the ally, the statesman; intrigue and faction in the court of a tyrant; grand political hopes dashed as famous utopian dreams become living nightmares—it is a stunningly dramatic and dynamic portrait of Plato and his philosophy.” An alll this is set in the exotic setting of Hellenized Sicily during the 5th century BC, which has a cultural and political complexity that makes the head spin uncontrollably.

Ariel Helfer is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Wayne State University, and the most recently editor and translator of Plato’s letters in an edition titled Plato’s Letters: The Political Challenges of the Philosophic LIfe . He was last on Historically Thinking to discuss Plato’s dialogue Alcibiades, and the broader subject of political ambition, in a conversation that was published on September 30, 2020.

For show notes, resources, and our archive, go the Historically Thinking Substack

Chapters

1. Introduction and Background — 00:22
2. The Authenticity Debate of Plato's Letters — 03:25
3. Arguments for Authenticity and Unity — 11:27
4. Textual History and Preservation — 18:36
5. Historical Context: Plato in Syracuse — 26:19
6. Themes in the Letters — 33:55
7. Letter One: A Dramatic Opening — 40:51
8. Letter Six: Philosophy, Law, and Playfulness — 47:35
9. Philosophy vs. History: Different Perspectives — 56:24
10. The Herculaneum Scrolls and Future Discoveries — 1:03:20

On October 16, 1843, William Rowan Hamilton was taking a walk with his wife Helen. He was on his way to preside over a meeting of the Royal Irish Academy. As Hamilton came to Broome Bridge, over the Royal Canal, the solution to a vexing problem finally emerged in front of him. He was so excited, and perhaps so afraid that he might forget, that he pulled out his penknife and carved the equation he had so suddenly conceived on the stonework of the bridge.

That might not seem like such a revolutionary moment. But as my guest Robyn Arianrohd explains, Hamilton’s equation was the result of long centuries of mathematical effort. And its consequences would be immense. Because Hamilton’s thought made possible the concepts known as vectors and tensors. And vectors and tensors underlie much of modern science and technology, because they are used whenever a scientist or an engineer wants to use locations in space–everything from designing a bridge, to predicting the path of a gravitational wave; and there’s quite a lot of territory in between those two applications. That moment by the Broome Bridge ushered in a new era.

Robyn Arianrohd is a mathematician, and a historian of science. Her previous books include Thomas Harriot: A Life in Science, which she and I discussed in a conversation that was published on April 30, 2019. Her latest book is Vector: A Surprising Story of Space, Time, and Mathematical Transformation.

For show notes, resources, and our archive, go the Historically Thinking Substack

Chapters

1. Thomas Harriet and the Birth of Modern Algebra
2. Navigation, Collisions, and Early Vector Concepts
3. Newton's Definition of Force and Direction
4. Augustus De Morgan and the Formalization of Algebra
5. Hamilton's Breakthrough: Quaternions and Four Dimensions
6. The Non-Commutative Revolution
7. James Clerk Maxwell and Electromagnetic Theory
8. Maxwell's Equations and the Nature of Light
9. The Vector Wars: Quaternions vs. Vectors
10. Tensors: Beyond Vectors to General Relativity
11. The Playful Seriousness of Mathematical Discovery
12. Conclusion: The Journey into History of Mathematics

“Oral history is a field of study and a method of gathering, preserving, and interpreting the voices and memories of people, communities, and participants in past events.” That is the definition provided by no less an authority than the Oral History Association.

And yet this brief, simple, and seemingly authoritative definition is accompanied by some ambiguity. On the one hand the Oral History Association proclaims that oral history is the oldest type of historical inquiry, stemming back to the origins of humanity itself. But on the other hand, oral history is one of the newest types of historical discipline, owing its birth to the invention of recording technology, and its rapid technological , from the introduction of magnetic tape recorders as consumer devices in 1947, to in 2025 the widespread field use of the superb digital recording studio and processor you typically refer to as your “phone”.

With us to explain the basics of the discipline of Oral History is Douglas A. Boyd. He is an oral historian, archivist, folklorist, musician, author and currently Director of the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History at the University of Kentucky. He is co-editor of Oral History and Digital Humanities: Voice, Access, Engagement (2014), producer of the documentary Kentucky Bourbon Tales: Distilling the Family Spirit, and author of Crawfish Bottom: Recovering a Lost Kentucky Community. But most recently he is the author of Oral History: A Very Short Introduction, which is the subject of our conversation today.

For more show notes, and our full archive, go to the Historically Thinking Substack

Chapters

• 00:00:00 Introduction: Defining Oral History
• 00:01:53 The Ambiguity and Multidisciplinary Nature of Oral History
• 00:07:34 The Modern History of Oral History and Recording Technology
• 00:21:07 Early Recording Technology and the Evolution of Interviews
• 00:34:27 Oral History vs. Oral Tradition
• 00:36:51 What Makes an Oral History Interview Different
• 00:41:17 The First Question: Tell Me About Yourself
• 00:47:19 Avoiding Leading Questions
• 00:50:37 The Power of Silence and Active Listening
• 00:54:07 The Art of Being Prepared Without Being a Know-It-All
• 01:03:26 The Digital Archive and Preservation Challenges
• 01:07:47 Enhancing Access and Discovery in the Digital Age
• 01:14:16 Ethical Access and Privacy Concerns
• 01:15:33 Practical Advice for Thanksgiving Interviews
• 01:19:49 Getting Started: Simple Questions and Curiosity
• 01:23:09 The Value of Multiple Sessions and Follow-Up Interviews
• 01:25:56 Closing Remarks

“Two years and a half years ago, when coming down the Nile in a dahabiah, I stopped at . . . Tel el-Amarna. In the course of my exploration, I noticed . . . the foundations of a large building, which had just been laid bare by the natives. . . . A few months afterwards the natives, still going on with their work of disinterment, discovered among the foundations a number of clay tablets covered with characters the like of which had not previously been seen in the land of Egypt.”

Those were the words of Archibald Henry Sayce, linguist, valetudinarian, and eventually first Professor of Assyriology at the University of Oxford. What he had noticed was the uncovering of the Amarna Letters, a set of clay tablets written in cuneiform, about which Sayce–and many others–would be intensively concerned. Finding these letters was like uncovering a file cabinet in the Pharoah of Egypt’s foreign ministry, suddenly providing a set of written sources that illuminated unknown areas of the past.

With me to talk about the Amarna letter is Eric H. Cline. He is professor of classics and anthropology at George Washington University, and author most recently of Love, War, and Diplomacy: The Discovery of the Amarna Letters and the Bronze Age World They Revealed. This is his third appearance on the podcast.

For this episode's show notes, and other resources, go to the Historically Thinking Substack

Chapter Outline

1. Introduction & Discovery of the Amarna Letters (00:00)
2. Illicit Excavations & Context (04:45)
3. The Translation Race (14:52)
4. The World of the Letters: Great Kings & Diplomacy (29:00)
5. Local Rulers & Conflicts (43:08)
6. Social Network Analysis (51:57)
7. Modern Relevance & Conclusion (57:41)

For at least two centuries, ideas of international relations and grand strategy have been premised on the notion of “great powers.” These were mighty states uniquely able to exert their influence through overwhelming military force. In the words of friend of the podcast Leopold von Ranke, a great power was one who could “maintain itself against all others, even when they are united”—but my guest, Phillips Payson O’Brien, argues that this definition is ahistorical nonsense.

Indeed “great power” he says, has always been a tautology. Nor has it been helpful or accurate to focus who has the biggest armies. And dreaming of decisive battle has blinded us to what truly determines victory: the capacity to mobilize and sustain industrial power, logistics, technology, and global reach.

In his new book War and Power: Who Wins Wars and Why, O’Brien dismantles some popular myths of military and diplomatic history and replaces them with a far more dynamic picture—one that redefines how states fight, how they win, and how we should understand power itself in the twenty-first century.

For this episode's show notes, and other resources, go to the Historically Thinking Substack

Chapters & Timestamps

• 00:28 – Introduction: Challenging the Great Power Myth
• 03:25 – The Persistence of Short War Myths
• 08:22 – The Political Nature of Warfare
• 14:06 – Power Rightly Understood: Economic and Technological Strength
• 20:59 – Society, Structure, and the British-American Power Transition
• 27:36 – Constructing and Regenerating Military Forces
• 46:16 – The Importance of Strong Alliances
• 39:23 – Understanding War: Beyond Battles and Single Weapons
• 45:16 – Human Elements: Leadership, Training, and Morale
• 49:54 – Technological Adaptation: From WWI Aircraft to Modern Drones
• 57:30 – Applied History and the Problem of Transparency
• 57:52 – Outro / Credits

The young King was determined to strike. His throne and power had been taken from him; now he would seize them both back. Now his chosen men entered the castle where he was a virtual prisoner, under the watchful eyes of his mother and her lover. Joining them, he led their rush to the Queen Mother’s apartments. There they seized those who had prevented Edward III from truly ruling as King of England.

Those dramatic events–which occurred in Nottingham Castle, of all places–are just one of many that occur in Michael Livingston’s new book, Bloody Crowns: A New History of the Hundred Year’s War. From the origins of the great conflict between France and England, to the last bitter acts, Livingston weaves the story of how not just those two powers but all Europe was riven by a war that last not just for a hundred years, but for two full centuries of war from 1292 to 1492.

Michael Livingston is Citadel Distinguished Professor at The Citadel and the author of many books on medieval military history. The former secretary-general for the US Commission on Military History, he lives in Charleston, South Carolina.

For more information, see the show notes for this episode on Historically Thinking Substack page.

• Defining the 200 Years War: 1292 to 1492
• Cantering Through 200 Years
• Scotland: The Enemy in the Rear
• Doctrine and the Birth of Standing Armies
• The Forgotten Naval War
• Anarchy, Free Companies, and Peasant Revolts
• The Longbow: Myth vs. Reality
• The Papacy and Religious Schism
• The Myth of the Decisive Battle
• Generational Conflict and Modern Parallels
• Conclusion

During the Second World War Germany’s submarines sank over three thousand Allied ships, that figure amounting to nearly three-quarters of Allied shipping losses in all theaters of the war. What would become a war within a war began in the very first days after September 1, 1939. This war–particularly the contest which has become known as the Battle of the Atlantic–has been the focus of numerous studies and arguments. But until now, little has been said about the undersea war from the perspective of the German submariners.

Roger Moorhouse has now remedied that with his new book Wolfpack: Inside Hitler’s U-boat War. It is not simply a story of the undersea war, but a history of those who fought it; who endured the miserable conditions within a German U-Boat, had only a 25% chance of survival, and when they did survive often were psychologically scarred for the remainder of their lives.

Roger Moorhouse is a historian of the Second World War. The author of numerous books, his most recent was The Forgers: The Forgotten Story of the Holocaust’s Most Audacious Rescue Operation, which we discussed in a conversation of November 6, 2023.

For more information, including to resources mentioned in the conversation, go to our Substack page, at www.historicallythinking.org