The Mask in the Glass Case

David Boles: Human Meme by David Boles

May 27, 202609:04Society & Culture

I want to tell you about a clay mask. It sits in a glass case at the British Museum, in the Mesopotamian galleries. The mask is approximately three thousand eight hundred years old, made in southern Iraq during the Old B...

Related Episodes

Continue listening to more episodes from David Boles: Human Meme.

Standing at the Rail

Jul 10, 2026 - 08:43

For most of Western history, the word art meant something wider and harder than it means now. Ars in Lati...

The Line in the Stone

Jul 8, 2026 - 09:29

January, in the year 897. A courtroom in Rome. In the defendant's chair sits a pope who has been dead for...

The Direction of Hope

Jul 7, 2026 - 09:02

I want to start with a red pen. In August of 1977, a volunteer astronomer named Jerry Ehman sat reviewing...

Held Until Called For

Jul 6, 2026 - 09:15

A thousand years ago, the early English law, and the Germanic law behind it, had a word for settling a de...

The Animal We Blame

Jul 2, 2026 - 09:05

Somewhere in the last year, a group you belong to went looking for a villain. Maybe it was a workplace af...

The Synthetic Cause

Jul 1, 2026 - 08:27

Start with the word meme, the way Richard Dawkins meant it in 1976, a piece of culture that copies itself...

Synalosis: The Shape That Closes

Jun 28, 2026 - 08:44

Two thousand years ago, on a hillside in eastern Gaul, a Roman army under Julius Caesar trapped a Gallic...

The Goldfish that Never Swam

Jun 24, 2026 - 08:51

This show is about the ideas that copy themselves through us, the ones we carry and hand on without inspe...