This new video from Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty, fea­tur­ing archae­ol­o­gist John Robb, gives you a quick and visu­al­ly appeal­ing intro­duc­tion to how humans have under­stood some­thing we take for grant­ed – our own bod­ies. Cov­er­ing 10,000 years in six min­utes, Robb takes us from the “Ani­mal Body” and “Sex­u­al­ized Body” of the Mesolith­ic and Neolith­ic Ages, to the “Politi­cized Body” of the Clas­si­cal Age, “God’s Body” of the Mid­dle Ages, and final­ly “The Body as Machine,” the metaphor we have been liv­ing with since 1500. And we wrap up with the “Body Dig­i­tal,” the body of the future, and “Mul­ti­ple Bod­ies.” This video comes from the Cam­bridge Ideas series avail­able on Cam­bridge’s YouTube chan­nel.

Leon Trot­sky, one of the fathers of the Russ­ian Rev­o­lu­tion, sec­ond only to to Lenin, was assas­si­nat­ed in Mex­i­co 70 years ago today (August 21, 1940). Dur­ing the ear­ly years of the Rev­o­lu­tion, Trot­sky head­ed up for­eign affairs for Rus­sia and found­ed the Red Army. Fol­low­ing Lenin’s death (1924), he looked primed to take con­trol of the rev­o­lu­tion­ary state. But Stal­in had oth­er thoughts about the mat­ter, and, before too long, Trot­sky found him­self in exile again. Pre­vi­ous exiles took him to Siberia, Kaza­khstan, Aus­tria, Switzer­land, Spain and the Unit­ed States. This time, he went to France, Nor­way, Turkey (see the film Vanes­sa Red­grave nar­rates on his stint in Istan­bul) and lat­er Mex­i­co (1936), where he lived with painter Diego Rivera and his wife/fellow painter, Fri­da Kahlo. Even­tu­al­ly, Kahlo and Trot­sky would have a famous affair.

Above, we have some grainy footage of Trot­sky from his Mex­i­co years. The footage dates back to 1937, and it shows Trot­sky, speak­ing in bro­ken Eng­lish, giv­ing thanks to Mex­i­co for pro­vid­ing sanc­tu­ary and defend­ing him­self against the show tri­als that Stal­in orches­trat­ed back in Rus­sia. Trot­sky was sen­tenced to death in absen­tia. Three years lat­er, he would be assas­si­nat­ed by an under­cov­er agent while still liv­ing in Mex­i­co. YouTube has more on the assas­si­na­tion here. A big thanks goes to Mike S. for unearthing this great lit­tle clus­ter of videos.

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