The Chair

The New Republic called Netflix's hit 2021 academic satire 'A elegy for the life of the mind'. Fair? Actually, Zoe thinks it's an elegy for the West full stop. Join Zoe and Tom – both of whom work at UK universities – as they dissect the hit series about a chaotic moment in campus life at a small US liberal arts college. How accurate, or even clever, a skewering of identitarian campus politics is this? Patchy to say the least, but one thing it does reveal is the secret of academic life: try never, ever to be Chair of your department. 

Om Podcasten

A podcast for the culturally curious that turns a critical eye on some of the most-hyped plays, books, films and music in recent years and asks where they came from and what they tell us about culture today. Zoe Strimpel is a historian of gender and intimacy, Sunday Telegraph columnist and sincere contrarian. Tom Stammers is a fair-minded historian of 19th century France and a lecturer in European history at Durham University - who nonetheless knows how to turn the screw when necessary. They've been yammering about culture together since university.