Podcasts Education Self-Improvement Conversations with Tyler Ada Palmer on Viking Metaphysics, Contingent Moments, and Censorship

Ada Palmer on Viking Metaphysics, Contingent Moments, and Censorship

Published: Oct. 4, 2023, noon

Ada Palmer is a Renaissance historian at the University of Chicago who studies radical free thought and censorship, composes music, consults on anime and manga, and is the author of the acclaimed Terra Ignota sci-fi series, among many other things.

Tyler sat down with Ada to discuss why living in the Renaissance was worse than living during the Middle Ages, how art protected Florence, why she\u2019s reluctant to travel back in time, which method of doing history is currently the most underrated, whose biography she\u2019ll write, how we know what old Norse music was like, why women scholars helped us understand Viking metaphysics, why Diderot's Jacques the Fatalist is an interesting work, what people misunderstand about the inquisition(s), why science fiction doesn\u2019t have higher social and literary status, which hive she would belong to in Terra Ignota, what the new novel she\u2019s writing is about, and more.

Read a\xa0full transcript\xa0enhanced with helpful links, or watch the\xa0full video.

Recorded June 28th, 2023.

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Photo Credit: Jason Smith