Context with Brad Harris

Context with Brad Harris treats history as the raw material for arguments about the present. Its episodes take something that feels urgent now and go looking for where it came from. The distances vary enormously. An episode on probability travels from Pascal and Fermat in the summer of 1654 to a world where machines make decisions on our behalf. Harris frames that summer as the moment the future stopped belonging only to oracles and theologians. A coin toss carries the explanation: one flip is uncertain, while a thousand are nearly predictable in aggregate. 'Which Humanity Survives?' starts from a Ross Douthat column and reaches much further back, to the late Upper Paleolithic. There Harris argues that the long stability of that era was the interruption, and that volatility is closer to normal for our species. It closes on which version of humanity comes through the age of artificial intelligence, a narrower question than survival. Nearer the present, Harris argues more pointedly. 'Why Modern Civilization Runs on Trust — And Why It's Breaking' cites Putnam's finding that more diverse communities showed lower social trust, and it notes that Putnam is a mainstream liberal academic who agonized over his own data. Harris then gives his own view that the only diversity that actually matters is diversity of perspective and ideas. The episode ends on a warning that there is a part of trust no technology can manufacture. 'When Greatness Becomes Bad' asks what makes a civilization great and what keeps it great, and it faults UCLA admissions for scoring applicants through racial categories. It closes with Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead and asks whether there is still the courage to empower exceptional people. 'Layers of Meaning in Human History' treats discipline and endurance as old sources of meaning, turning to Stephen Ambrose's Undaunted Courage and the Lewis and Clark expedition. There is also a conversation episode with the philosopher Stephen Hicks of Rockford University about his book Explaining Postmodernism. They cover what postmodernism means, where it came from and how it contrasts with modernism. Harris admits that criticizing its worst ideas is an axe he has ground throughout his academic career. The writing is essayistic, with long sentences broken up by short ones like 'The veil had been lifted.' Harris states conclusions instead of surveying positions, so it is always clear where he stands. Listener support through Patreon and subscriptions on Apple Podcasts and Spotify keeps the show going, and supporters get ad-free listening and bonus episodes. Several of those bonus episodes are conversations with other historians, authors and podcasters. A good first episode is the probability one, which shows the method at its clearest. For Harris at his most pointed, start with 'When Greatness Becomes Bad'. The sign-off stays the same: 'I'm Brad Harris. So long.'