Jill Lepore believes that history can help us understand why people deny climate change, oppose vaccinations, and claim the 2020 election was stolen—or, as she puts it, “why it seems lately as if we don’t know anything at all.” In her podcast The Last Archive, listeners join the Harvard historian as she tries to solve an existential mystery: How do we find what’s real in a post-truth world? The Last Archive puts history to work in this quest. In the first season (released May to June 2020), Lepore hunts down who killed truth. In the second season (released April to June 2021), she explores why, in matters of fact, it seems like doubt has eclipsed certainty.

Timeliness is key for any historian writing about current events. Like the articles she writes for the New Yorker, podcasting allows Lepore to reach beyond the academy and traditional forms of scholarship...

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