This is the best podcast I have found. Everyone should listen to it!

This is a brilliant podcast. Well thought out, well reasoned, and wonderfully narrated. This is rapidly becoming my most rewarding listen.

Good perspectives on good topics

So glad to see your podcast. Wish it would let me down load.

This show was pretty great. I looked forward to early episodes. It’s gotten weird and annoyingly inconsistent and inconsiderate of views that don’t seem to align with the host’s. It lacks context lol

Tired of lies, ads, and wokeness? Try this. Glad I found it and hope it keeps going

When you claim that the transformation of the Roman Republic into the principate/empire was in any way due to an inflated bureaucracy, it just discredits everything you’ve claimed prior. You could have kept your dignity (even given the silly crypto topic) if you didn’t try to shoehorn in false historical “facts.” The folks and ideologies you’re arguing against are so far out there, you don’t need to swing for the fences with each episode. Simple rational counter points against their latest moral panic will get you 99% of the way there.

Must listen Podcast. Intelligent and carefully crafted and it’s truthful. Some reviewers here clearly got triggered from some episodes. Sometimes the truth is painful.. Needs some new episodes though, it’s been awhile!

Just discovered this podcast series a few days ago and I cannot stop listening. In this series of podcasts, Harris is using book synopses in a particular order to explain the transformation of our culture. It’s a unique approach. He’s succeeded in clarifying the angst so many of us feel about our present world. While he’s not apolitical, his position is fairly centrist and there is much that everyone can get from this series. Can’t say enough good things about it! My eyes are opened.

This is a must listen podcast!

If you are a history lover this podcast is a great way to supplement your reading list. I’d love to hear you have a discussion with historian Thaddeus Russell; not only would it be a great historical discussion, but he would be able to push back a little on the postmodernism front.

Early episodes of this podcast are brilliant and insightful. I would be lying if I said that I hadn’t given the first ten or twelve episodes multiple listens and found them to be a wealth of knowledge that’s been put into a larger context to help examine. It’s when Brad begins to move towards divulging personal opinions and alignments that I began to take issue and stopped listening. As a person has a leftist alignment, I can only recommend the early episodes of Context, although I recommend them highly.

I am really glad I found Context and his other podcast How It Began. It helps that I agree with him on almost everything, Which I suppose is a little concerning as I am adding one more notch to my confirmation bias tendencies, but I think these are good biases nowadays. On the very first podcast I was initially nervous about his broadcaster voice and I wondered if it was going to be one more episode from the history channel on ancient alien scientist visitors. It turns out, I assume, that this is just the way he talks… hopefully not with a beer or two in him. I have been a science teacher, I have published educational Science simulations with my company, and I am currently working his podcasts a valuable asset. Today I shall donate to his efforts.

A marvelous tour through history’s best ideas. Brad also does an excellent and captivating job applying the lessons of history to our present circumstances.

This is one of the most insightful and interesting podcasts I have ever listened to.

Brad Harris has an extremely thoughtful voice that slices through bias and social trends. Each episode is an objective view of some interesting idea or philosophy.

To the converted Brad preaches to, his delivery probably seems slick. However, it is a thin, slimy veneer for superficial intellectual sophistry. He intimates that postmodernism leads to totalitarianism without supporting evidence; not very rational nor enlightened. He seems to think that freedom of speech includes freedom from criticism of the content of that speech. I don’t remember him saying he is a libertarian but his harping on individualism suggests so. I could go on but I won’t.

Earlier episodes were thoughtful but now standard right wing fake news setting up “woke” a straw men and shooting them down. Pseudo-libertarian claptrap. I don’t think grad students are the enemy of society, dude. Also, absurd reading of Orwell’s 1984. Avoid.

The world’s filled with noise but Brad Harris cuts through. He brings context to the timely via timeless ideas. I love opening my app and seeing that a new Context has dropped!

I recently discovered this podcast and hope to eventually listen to every episode. There is a famous quote, “Those who don’t study history are destined to repeat it.” A review of the episode topics (along with the host’s discussions about the influences of biology, disease, geography, technology, “lazy, terrified humans,” etc.) clearly illustrate this sentiment. One astounding (May, 2019) episode discusses the book, “The Closing of the American Mind,” which was PUBLISHED IN 1987. Amazingly, we only need to skim today’s headlines to immediately appreciate the relevance of the author’s controversial thesis. I highly recommend this podcast.

I was just looking for a distilled podcast of “Guns, Germs, and Steel” and this is it and so much more! Takes hugely impactful and informative works and turns them into ~30 minute episodes for people on the go. Additionally the episodes seem to have a over arching story told chronologically explaining the history of civilization and not just the how, but why things unfolded the way they did.

Learned much from you ... will you return?

Honestly, after listening through several shows, the delivery started to grate on my nerves. He sounded like he was doing an impression of those stereotypical, “In a world where…”, movie trailer narrators. Fantastic content, bad delivery.

Harris’s podcast is about history books with Big Ideas. I have found myself discussing these ideas with friends and mulling them over. How did certain events bring major change in human history?

I listen to this podcast with rapt attention, learning how history has brought the world we know it into being, and how the lessons learned from the long struggle of civilizations can be applied to my own life and business. I will be going back through the entire season of podcasts with a pen and notepad soon. Thanks for being my favorite new teacher Brad!

Brad summarizes an A+ book that investigates historical trends at the 40,000 foot level, and uses the book review as a springboard to illuminate trends in the scientific, economic, and moral progress of human societies. Although different, his voice is every bit as essential as Mike Duncan or Dan Carlin. I hope he makes more.

I don’t consider myself a scholar of history but maybe I should start, since the other reviewers keep commenting on how informative these podcasts are. If you are someone who just loves reading the Foreword in a book then you might like these podcasts. I say “might” because you will also have to get past the podcaster’s super cheesy vocal stylings. If this was a podcast of ghost stories it could work, but it just sounds silly here and got on my nerves very quickly. Save yourself, move right on past this podcast and pick up the actual books he recommends, or listen to the audiobook versions where possible.

Excellent podcast giving you great insight and context into historical happenings and scientific breakthroughs you don’t get anywhere else!

Great podcast

I have thoroughly enjoyed this podcast, but I feel that the absence of exploitation by world powers and therefore a reconstruction of an oppositional argument is lost. Instead, we listen to a somewhat whitewashed view of progress. This simply ignores the duality of the truth about our progress as a human race. Both horrendous and courageous acts are responsible for the modern world as we know it today.

There is no better “manna” of knowledge to ingest in our present history than that which Mr. Brad Harris has gathered for our consumption in Context. This moveable feast is the stuffs the ancients and contemporaries sustained themselves on to the path of Enlightenment and modernity. These texts and Brad’s brilliant analysis identifies Reason as the creative force that has constructed our modern day and lights a candle in the darkness of superstition, supposition, ignorance and political affiliation. Also within lies a cautionary note that a future without these insights, these values, this understanding, we will perish from starvation in the darkness. I cannot recommend this any more than to say I have required my sons to listen to this podcast so that they may learn what history can teach us.

As Bob Marley sang “if you know your history, then you would know where I’m coming from” Context will help you to understand better than you ever thought possible. A great investment of your time.

Every episode is an introduction to another field of knowledge that is both interesting and important. Harris respects ideas and his audience’s intelligence by exploring the foundations of these ideas. Wonderful guests that challenge and enlighten.

Brad introduces some books I would have never thought of reading and his breakdown of their ideas is wonderful. Great production value and interesting for even those who didn’t have any interest in the first place.

No matter your philosophy or ideology we should all agree that the very facts that make the world work shouldn’t be up for debate. But sadly they are and Brad Harris does a great job of bringing to the fore of why it is so important that we accept fact as fact.

Why would you say if anyone you loved was mistreated your first instinct would be to burn the place down. You would reject the social compact and that would be your first instinct instead of a more modern reaction of changing the system.

Quite simply a stellar podcast that I will be recommending a lot. Though the narrator can be dry, he is very clear, and his tone and enunciation fit the subject material well. A great thing to recommend to HS and college students, looking for an interesting question that will drive their future, or for someone like myself, finishing grad school and interested in learning more about topics that I ended up not specializing in. Great stuff, plan to support on Patreon!

Just amazing. Shorter episodes but on par with Hardcore History in both informing and captivating. This podcast is a gem and am immediately hooked. Thank you, Brad.

I love this podcast- just listened to an hour and a half of it and wasn't bored for a minute. Harris is super knowledgeable and his voice is LOVELY. Keep it up!

Already one of my favorite podcasts. Harris is a keen and sophisticated curator of ideas and history.

I’ve wanted to pick up and read every book featured on this podcast, even the ones I’ve already read.

Offers great, concise summaries of notable history books. He often adds in critiques to provide perspective. No frills, just ideas.

Extremely entertaining and enlightening. Great for broadening perspective about our place on this earth, how we got here and where we may go. Fantastic job and please keep them coming 🤙

I was disappointed at first when How it Began ended but am now enthralled with Context. Thank you for the brilliant content.

If you have always meant to read “Guns, Germs and Steel” and other weighty tomes, but didn’t have the time or patience listen to this podcast.

Context offers a quick synopsis of important books that help give listeners the understanding of how History forms the Context in which we all live. Interesting program and a delightful premise to help develop ones outlook on our “Modern” world.

Brad Harris makes History approachable. Context is a brilliant podcast. If you didn't like history, you will after you listen to Context and Brad'a How It Began podcast.

A lot of the podcasts I listen to are “pop history.” I love those, but this is like being back in a university lecture, and that’s a good thing. Get smarter, listen to Brad Harris

Well informed, carefully presented, and deeply interesting

Listen to this! Do you ever regret tine not spent reading academic classics, and enriching your mind? I do. Instead, let Brad pour books into your head over the course of 30 to 50 enjoyable minutes.