Originally published on March 16, 2025 (Episode 400)
Introduction
This is the 400th episode of Historically Thinking. While the podcast is about history, each week I get to the past through a conversation. But even before I began this podcast I’ve wanted to believe something Plato wrote, that “Truth, as human reality, comes about only in conversation.”
So it’s fitting that we mark this milestone of the podcast with a conversation about conversation itself. My guest Paula Marantz Cohen joins me to discuss her new book Talking Cure: An Essay on the Civilizing Power of Conversation (Princeton, 2023). In it she explores the many terrains of talk: from family chatter to the kinds of restaurants and bars most conducive to good talk (a bar stool needs to have a back for good conversation); from gatherings of great conversationalists to gossip; and even the surprisingly helpful lessons of self-help books. Along the way, we touch on Samuel Johnson’s “solid conversation” and what it takes to unlock it.
About the Guest
Paula Marantz Cohen is Dean Emerita of the Pennoni Honors College and Distinguished Professor of English at Drexel University. She is the author of Of Human Kindness: What Shakespeare Teaches Us About Empathy (Yale, 2021)and six novels, including Jane Austen in Boca (“Pride and Prejudice” set in a Jewish retirement community in Boca Raton), What Alice Knew: A Most Curious Tale of Henry James and Jack the Ripper, and the young adult novel Beatrice Bunson’s Guide to Romeo and Juliet.
For Further Investigation
Paula Marantz Cohen, Talking Cure: An Essay on the Civilizing Power of Conversation (Princeton, 2023)
—, Of Human Kindness: What Shakespeare Teaches Us About Empathy (Yale, 2021)
Samuel Johnson: Quotes on Conversation
Virginia Woolf, “A Room of One’s Own”—see pp. 9 and 15 for the descriptions of the two meals
Related Episodes
Episode 100: Sam Wineburg and Lendol Calder
Episode 200: Connecting, from an English Portrait to Galileo, and beyond—with the late John Heilbron, an eminent historian of science
Episode 300: Russ Roberts on “Wild Problems”
Listen & Discuss
What makes a great conversation? Drop a comment with your thoughts, share this episode with your best conversationalist friend, and let’s keep the dialogue going.
