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← NPR's Book of the Day1. Sept. · 12 Min.

'How We Disappear' is a Stanford historian's take on our personal archives

'How We Disappear' is a Stanford historian's take on our personal archives1. Sept.12 Min.

Thomas Mullaney is a historian at Stanford University. After his father died, Mullaney began to think about the archive he left behind: papers, documents, photos, objects and more. How We Disappear is a personal and academic history of information – and the role information plays in a naturally chaotic universe. In today’s episode, Mullaney joins Here & Now’s Peter O’Dowd for a conversation about the small pieces that form our identities, a concept historians called “original order” and why How We Disappear is really a book about entropy.

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