Humanities Now
Humanities Now is the official podcast of the Humanities Center at Texas Tech. We feature conversations with members of the humanities community at Texas Tech University. With every episode, these varied voices help us realize the Center’s mission: asking out loud, “What does it mean to be human?” and demonstrating how can we answer that question from so many different perspectives.
Humanities Now
On Shakespeare, Monkeys, and the Divine: A Conversation with Heather Warren-Crow and T.J. Geiger II
Could a gaggle of monkeys randomly typing produce a literary classic? Could they by chance produce the complete works of Shakespeare, as many have speculated in an ongoing thought experiment for over a century now.
These questions are the starting point for a post-script conversation to our 2023-2024 Value/Values programming. On this episode, Michael Borshuk chats with TTU faculty members Dr. Heather Warren-Crow, Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Arts, and Dr. TJ Geiger II, Associate Professor of Technical Communication and Rhetoric, to talk about their recent research projects. In a wide-ranging conversation that begins with Dr. Warren-Crow’s newest book and its attention the idea that monkeys might randomly write the works of Shakespeare, we discuss animals, culture, the divine, how to define humanity, and whether the act of producing that definition continues to matter at all?
Click here for more on Dr. Warren-Crow's latest book Shakespeare and Nonhuman Intelligence.