28 episodes
Who Killed Truth? Pushkin
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- History
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4.7 • 12 Ratings
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Subscribe to Pushkin+ to hear the full audiobook.
Many historians and cultural observers argue we live in a post-truth world—but if truth is dead, who killed it? And how did it die? Join celebrated historian Jill Lepore as she cracks the case by examining key moments in the history of truth, doubt, and evidence across the last century.
In Who Killed Truth? acclaimed Harvard historian and New Yorker staff writer Jill Lepore traces the origins of our current post-truth crisis. In a series of spellbinding stories, Lepore investigates murders, hoaxes, lies and delusions to reckon with the instability of truth and fiction in the twenty-first century. Listeners will follow Lepore through a fascinating, erudite, and antic journey through the thorny problem of how we know what we know, and why it seems sometimes as if we don't know anything at all anymore.
Revisiting key moments in U.S. history—from the Scopes Monkey Trial in 1925 to the 1977 National Women’s Convention to the first election predicted by computer, and more—Lepore uncovers the secrets of the past the way a detective might, hot on the trail of the killer of truth.
Please note: This collection includes content that has been previously released in The Last Archive podcast.
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1 - Opening Credits
Many historians and cultural observers argue we live in a post-truth world—but if truth is dead, who killed it? And how did it die? Join celebrated historian Jill Lepore as she cracks the case by examining key moments in the history of truth, doubt, and evidence across the last century.
Subscribe to Pushkin+ to hear the full audiobook.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. -
2 - Introduction
Subscribe to Pushkin+ to hear the full audiobook.
Many historians and cultural observers argue we live in a post-truth world—but if truth is dead, who killed it? And how did it die? Join celebrated historian Jill Lepore as she cracks the case by examining key moments in the history of truth, doubt, and evidence across the last century.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. -
3 - Part I: The Trial
Subscribe to Pushkin+ to hear the full audiobook: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/channel/pushkin/id6442453644
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4 - Chapter One: The Clue of the Blue Bottle
On a spring day in 1919, a woman’s body was found bound, gagged, and strangled in a garden in Barre, Vermont. Who was she? Who killed her? In this chapter, we try to solve a cold case–reopening a century-old murder investigation–as a way to uncover the history of evidence itself. What is a clue? What is a fact? What is a mystery? We put the pieces of the puzzle together: photographs, newspaper articles, a private eye’s notebook, the trial record and, last but not least, a trip to the scene of the crime.
Subscribe to Pushkin+ to hear the full audiobook: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/channel/pushkin/id6442453644 -
5 - Chapter Two: Monkey Business
In 1925, John Scopes, a high school teacher from Dayton, Tennessee, was put on trial for teaching evolution. It came to be called the “monkey trial,” a landmark in the history of doubt. All over the country, Americans tuned in on their radios as science and faith battled in the courtroom. But the nation also witnessed something else: the beginnings of a culture war that’s been waged ever since. This chapter is a skeptical chronicle of an early battle in that war.
Subscribe to Pushkin+ to hear the full audiobook: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/channel/pushkin/id6442453644 -
6 - Chapter Three: Detection of Deception
When James Frye, a young black man, is charged with murder under unusual circumstances in 1922, he trusts his fate to a strange new machine: the lie detector. Why did the lie detector’s inventor, William Moulton Marston, a psychology professor and lawyer, think a machine could tell if a human being is lying better than a jury? And what does it all have to do with Wonder Woman?
Subscribe to Pushkin+ to hear the full audiobook: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/channel/pushkin/id6442453644