NBN Book of the Day
1,103 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 2 months ago - ★★★★★ - 11 ratingsThe "NBN Book of the Day" features the most timely and interesting author interviews from the New Books Network delivered to you every weekday.
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Episodes
The Future of Politicized Narratives: A Discussion with Andreas Krieg
June 13, 2023 08:00 - 55 minutesThe word "narrative" is now so frequently heard that some think it over used. Perhaps its ubiquity results from it being so relevant – what used to be thought of as the mundane area of misinformation has become one of the most powerful elements of political practice. Andreas Krieg discusses the latest trends in the world of story-telling with Owen Bennett-Jones. Krieg is the author of Subversion: The Strategic Weaponization of Narratives (Georgetown UP, 2023). Owen Bennett-Jones is a freelanc...
Fredrik Albritton Jonsson and Carl Wennerlind, "Scarcity: A History from the Origins of Capitalism to the Climate Crisis" (Harvard UP, 2023)
June 12, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourScarcity: A History from the Origins of Capitalism to the Climate Crisis (Harvard UP, 2023) is a sweeping intellectual history of the concept of economic scarcity—its development across five hundred years of European thought and its decisive role in fostering the climate crisis. Modern economics presumes a particular view of scarcity, in which human beings are innately possessed of infinite desires and society must therefore facilitate endless growth and consumption irrespective of nature’s l...
R. T. Howard, "Spying on the Reich: The Cold War Against Hitler" (Oxford UP, 2023)
June 11, 2023 08:00 - 34 minutesExactly a century ago, intelligence agencies across Europe first became aware of a fanatical German nationalist whose political party was rapidly gathering momentum. His name was Adolf Hitler. From 1933, these spy services watched with growing alarm as they tried to determine what sort of threat Hitler's regime would now pose to the rest of Europe. Would Germany rearm, either covertly or in open defiance of the outside world? Would Hitler turn his attention eastwards - or did he also pose a t...
Patrick J. Charles, "Vote Gun: How Gun Rights Became Politicized in the United States" (Columbia UP, 2023)
June 10, 2023 08:00 - 42 minutesToday, gun control is one of the most polarizing topics in American politics. However, before the 1960s, positions on firearms rights did not necessarily map onto partisan affiliation. What explains this drastic shift? Patrick J. Charles charts the rise of gun rights activism from the early twentieth century through the 1980 presidential election, pinpointing the role of the 1968 Gun Control Act. Gun rights advocates including the National Rifle Association had lobbied legislators for decades...
Amanda L. Van Lanen, "The Washington Apple: Orchards and the Development of Industrial Agriculture" (U Oklahoma Press, 2022)
June 09, 2023 08:00 - 48 minutesIn the nineteenth century, most American farms had a small orchard or at least a few fruit-bearing trees. People grew their own apple trees or purchased apples grown within a few hundred miles of their homes. Nowadays, in contrast, Americans buy mass-produced fruit in supermarkets, and roughly 70 percent of apples come from Washington State. So how did Washington become the leading producer of America’s most popular fruit? In The Washington Apple: Orchards and the Development of Industrial Ag...
Ann Komaromi, "Soviet Samizdat: Imagining a New Society" (Cornell UP, 2022)
June 08, 2023 08:00 - 50 minutesSoviet Samizdat: Imagining a New Society (Cornell UP, 2022) traces the emergence and development of samizdat, a significant and distinctive phenomenon of the late Soviet era that provided an uncensored system for making and sharing texts. In bringing together research into the underground journals, bulletins, art folios, and other periodicals produced in the Soviet Union from the mid-1950s to the mid-1980s, Ann Komaromi reveals how samizdat helped to foster new forms of imagined community amo...
Robin James, "The Future of Rock and Roll: 97X WOXY and the Fight for True Independence" (UNC Press, 2023)
June 07, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourIn 1983, an Ohio radio station called WOXY launched a sonic disruption to both corporate rock and to its conservative home region, programming an omnivorous range of genres and artists while being staunchly committed to local independent art and media. In the 1990s, as alternative rock went mainstream and radio grew increasingly homogeneous, WOXY gained international renown as one of Rolling Stone's "Last Great Independent Radio" stations. The station projected a philosophy that prioritized s...
Erik J. Dahl, "The COVID-19 Intelligence Failure: Why Warning Was Not Enough" (Georgetown UP, 2023)
June 06, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourEpidemiologists and national security agencies warned for years about the potential for a deadly pandemic, but in the end global surveillance and warning systems were not enough to avert the COVID-19 disaster. In The COVID-19 Intelligence Failure: Why Warning Was Not Enough (Georgetown UP, 2023), Erik J. Dahl demonstrates that understanding how intelligence warnings work--and how they fail--shows why the years of predictions were not enough. In the first in-depth analysis of the topic, Dahl e...
Xiaomei Chen, "Performing the Socialist State: Modern Chinese Theater and Film Culture" (Columbia UP, 2023)
June 05, 2023 08:00 - 34 minutesXiaomei Chen's book Performing the Socialist State: Modern Chinese Theater and Film Culture (Columbia UP, 2023) looks at three "founding fathers" of Chinese spoken drama: Tian Han, Hong Shen, and Ouyang Yuqian. Dr. Chen argues that these three theatre artists laid the groundwork for Mao-era Chinese drama during the earlier Republic period, and that there is more continuity between the two periods than has typically been supposed. She also argues that these artists were not mere victims of hea...
Gladys L. Mitchell-Walthour, "The Politics of Survival: Black Women Social Welfare Beneficiaries in Brazil and the United States" (Columbia UP, 2023)
June 04, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourPoor Black women who benefit from social welfare are marginalized in a number of ways by interlocking systemic racism, sexism, and classism. The media renders them invisible or casts them as racialized and undeserving "welfare queens" who exploit social safety nets. Even when Black women voters are celebrated, the voices of the poorest too often go unheard. How do Afro-descendant women in former slave-holding societies survive amid multifaceted oppression? In The Politics of Survival: Black ...
The Future of Big Finance: A Discussion with Anastasia Nesvetailova
June 03, 2023 08:00 - 46 minutesHow common is financial malpractice in big, well known financial companies? Is it so common that it should really be seen as a business model more than an occasional aberration by rogue traders? These are questions posed by Ronen Palan and Anastasia Nesvetailova in their book Sabotage: The Business of Finance (PublicAffairs, 2020). Listen to Owen Bennett-Jones discuss the future of big finance with Anastasia Nesvetailova. Owen Bennett-Jones is a freelance journalist and writer. A former BBC c...
Patrick Jory, "A History of Manners and Civility in Thailand" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
June 02, 2023 08:00 - 48 minutesIf you’ve visited Thailand even for a short time you’ve probably been given, or have come across, some basic instructions on dos and don’ts — where to put, or not to put, your hands and feet, what to wear or not to wear to a temple, why not to get angry in public, that sort of thing. Perhaps you’ve wondered about the pedagogies that give these social practices their durability. And whether you’ve been to the country or not you might have seen news reports showing prime ministers and army gene...
Amber Knight and Joshua Miller, "Prenatal Genetic Testing, Abortion, and Disability Justice" (Oxford UP, 2023)
June 01, 2023 08:00 - 38 minutesThe routinization of non-invasive prenatal genetic testing (NIPT) raises urgent questions about disability rights and reproductive justice. Supporters defend NIPT on the grounds that genetic information about the fetus helps would-be parents make better family planning choices. Prenatal Genetic Testing, Abortion, and Disability Justice challenges that assessment by exploring how NIPT can actually constrain pregnant women's options. Prospective parents must balance a complicated array of facto...
Alex Prichard, "Anarchism: a Very Short Introduction" (Oxford UP, 2022)
May 31, 2023 08:00 - 55 minutesIf you asked a passerby on the street what anarchism is, they may answer that it is an ideology based on chaos, disorder, and violence. But is this true? What exactly is anarchism? Anarchism: a Very Short Introduction (Oxford UP, 2022) provides a new point of departure for our understanding of anarchism. Prichard describes anarchism as a lived set of practices, with a rich historical legacy, and shows how anarchists have inspired and criticised some of our most cherished values and concepts, ...
Ashok Gopal, "A Part Apart: The Life and Thought of B. R. Ambedkar" (Navayana, 2023)
May 30, 2023 08:00 - 36 minutesBhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891–1956) is perhaps the most iconised historical figure in India. Born into a caste deemed ‘unfit for human association’, he came to define what it means to be human. How and why did Ambedkar, who revered and cited the Gita till the 1930s, turn against Hinduism? What were his quarrels with Gandhi and Savarkar? Why did he come to see himself as Moses? How did the lessons learnt at Columbia University impact the struggle for water in Mahad in 1927 and the drafting of t...
Jaime Green, "The Possibility of Life: Science, Imagination and Our Vision of the Cosmos" (Hanover Square Press, 2023)
May 29, 2023 08:00 - 56 minutesIn this episode we talk to Jaime Green about her superb cultural and scientific exploration of alien life and the cosmos. It examines how the possibility of life on other planets shapes our understanding of humanity. Fans of Leslie Jamison, Carl Zimmer and Carlo Rovelli will find a lot to think about. One of the most powerful questions humans ask about the cosmos is: Are we alone? Yet this very question is inevitably reduced to yes or no, to odds and probabilities that posit answers through c...
Bart D. Ehrman, "Armageddon: What the Bible Really Says about the End" (Simon and Schuster, 2023)
May 28, 2023 08:00 - 37 minutesA New York Times bestselling Biblical scholar, reveals why our popular understanding of the Apocalypse is all wrong—and why that matters. You’ll find nearly everything the Bible has to say about the end in the Book of Revelation: a mystifying prophecy filled with bizarre symbolism, violent imagery, mangled syntax, confounding contradictions, and very firm ideas about the horrors that await us all. But whether you understand the book as a literal description of what will soon come to pass, int...
Naoíse Mac Sweeney, "The West: A New History of an Old Idea" (Dutton, 2023)
May 27, 2023 08:00 - 42 minutesDr. Naoíse Mac Sweeney presents a radical new account of how the idea of the West has shaped our history, told through the stories of fourteen fascinating lives in her book The West: A New History of an Old Idea (Dutton, 2023). We tend to imagine Western Civilisation as a golden thread, leading through the centuries from classical antiquity to the countries of the modern West - a cultural genealogy that connects Plato to NATO. It is an idea often invoked in the speeches of politicians and the...
Evelyn Alsultany, "Broken: The Failed Promise of Muslim Inclusion" (NYU Press, 2022)
May 26, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourIn Broken: The Failed Promise of Muslim Inclusion (NYU Press, 2022), Evelyn Alsultany, Professor at the University of Southern California, argues that, even amid challenges to institutionalized Islamophobia, diversity initiatives fail on their promise by only focusing on crisis moments. Muslims get included through “crisis diversity,” where high-profile Islamophobic incidents are urgently responded to and then ignored until the next crisis. In the popular cultural arena of television, this m...
Robert F. Trager and Joslyn N. Barnhart, "The Suffragist Peace: How Women's Votes Lead to Fewer Wars" (Oxford UP, 2022)
May 25, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourIn the modern age, some parts of the world are experiencing a long peace. Nuclear weapons, capitalism and the widespread adoption of democratic institutions have been credited with fostering this relatively peaceful period. Yet, these accounts overlook one of the most dramatic transformations of the 20th century: the massive redistribution of political power as millions of women around the world won the right to vote. The Suffragist Peace: How Women Shape the Politics of War (Oxford Universit...
Sarah Mellors Rodriguez, "Reproductive Realities in Modern China: Birth Control and Abortion, 1911-2021" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
May 24, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourIn Reproductive Realities in Modern China: Birth Control and Abortion, 1911-2021 (Cambridge UP, 2022), assistant professor of history at Missouri State University, Sarah Mellors Rodriguez explores the longue durée history of birth control and abortion in China from the Republican period to the present day. Drawing from a rich array of archival materials, oral histories, posters, films, novels, and other media, she delves into the diverse attitudes, policies, and practices of birth control and...
Rosamond McKitterick, "Rome and the Invention of the Papacy: The Liber Pontificalis" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
May 23, 2023 08:00 - 49 minutesThe remarkable, and permanently influential, papal history known as the Liber pontificalis shaped perceptions and the memory of Rome, the popes, and the many-layered past of both city and papacy within western Europe. In Rome and the Invention of the Papacy: The Liber Pontificalis (Cambridge University Press, 2020), Dr. Rosamond McKitterick offers a new analysis of this extraordinary combination of historical reconstruction, deliberate selection and political use of fiction, to illuminate the...
Rebecca Brückmann, "Massive Resistance and Southern Womanhood: White Women, Class, and Segregation" (U Georgia Press, 2021)
May 22, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourMassive Resistance and Southern Womanhood: White Women, Class, and Segregation (U Georgia Press, 2021) offers a comparative sociocultural and spatial history of white supremacist women involved in massive resistance. The book focuses on segregationist grassroots activism in Little Rock, Arkansas, New Orleans, Louisiana, and Charleston, South Carolina from the late 1940s to the late 1960s. Dr. Rebecca Brückmann combines theory and detailed case studies to interrogate the “roles, actions, self-...
Stefan Lorenz Sorgner, "We Have Always Been Cyborgs: Digital Data, Gene Technologies, and an Ethics of Transhumanism" (Bristol UP, 2023)
May 21, 2023 08:00 - 45 minutesThe concept of transhumanism emerged in the middle of the 20th century, and has influenced discussions around AI, brain–computer interfaces, genetic technologies and life extension. Despite its enduring influence in the public imagination, a fully developed philosophy of transhumanism has not yet been presented. In We Have Always Been Cyborgs: Digital Data, Gene Technologies, and an Ethics of Transhumanism (Bristol UP, 2023), leading philosopher Stefan Lorenz Sorgner explores the critical iss...
Philip Pettit, "The State" (Princeton UP, 2023)
May 20, 2023 08:00 - 43 minutesIn The State (Princeton University Press, 2023), the prominent political philosopher Philip Pettit embarks on a massive undertaking, offering a major new account of the foundations of the state and the nature of justice. In doing so, Pettit builds a new theory of what the state is and what it ought to be, addresses the normative question of how justice serves as a measure of the success of a state, and the way it should operate in relation to its citizens and other people. Philip Pettit is L....
Kathryn J. McGarr, "City of Newsmen: Public Lies and Professional Secrets in Cold War Washington" (U Chicago Press, 2022)
May 19, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourKathryn McGarr’s City of Newsmen: Public Lies and Professional Secrets in Cold War Washington (U Chicago Press, 2022) explores foreign policy journalism in Washington during and after World War II—a time supposedly defined by the press’s blind patriotism and groupthink. McGarr reveals, though, that D.C. reporters then were deeply cynical about government sources and their motives, but kept their doubts to themselves for professional, social, and ideological reasons. The alliance and rivalries...
Farah Godrej, "Freedom Inside?: Yoga and Meditation in the Carceral State" (Oxford UP, 2022)
May 18, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourAre meditation and yoga offered to prisoners merely to have them acquiesce to being incarcerated and degraded? Or can they help prisoners interrogate the political and social structures that incarcerate and degrade? In Freedom Inside? Yoga and Meditation in the Carceral State (Oxford University Press, 2022), Farah Godrej explores the tension between narratives of quiet contemplation and social or political liberation in meditative and yogic practice that the carceral condition exacerbates or...
Daniel A. Bell, "The Dean of Shandong: Confessions of a Minor Bureaucrat at a Chinese University" (Princeton UP, 2023)
May 17, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourI am not now nor at any time have ever been a member of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Yet I serve as dean of a large faculty of political science in a Chinese university that trains students and provincial cadres to serve the country as Communist Party officials: It’s typically a post reserved for members of the CCP, given the political sensitivity of the work. That’s part of the surprise. The other part is that I’m a Canadian citizen, born and bred in Montreal, without any Chinese ances...
Victoria Bateman, "Naked Feminism: Breaking the Cult of Female Modesty" (Polity Press, 2023)
May 16, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourIs it right that, despite the promises of feminism, women’s bodies remain at the mercy of state, society and religion? Should a scantily clad woman, or a promiscuous one, be worth less than a fully covered woman, or a chaste one? Are being sexy and being smart really mutually exclusive? Can a woman be both body and brain? Dr. Victoria Bateman has confronted these questions with actions as well as words. She has appeared naked on national television, on stage, in art and at protests – using he...
Carol Graham, "The Power of Hope: How the Science of Well-Being Can Save Us from Despair" (Princeton UP, 2023)
May 15, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourIn a society marked by extreme inequality of income and opportunity, why should economists care about how people feel? The truth is that feelings of well-being are critical metrics that predict future life outcomes. In The Power of Hope: How the Science of Well-Being Can Save Us from Despair (Princeton UP, 2023), economist Carol Graham argues for the importance of hope--little studied in economics at present--as an independent dimension of well-being. Given America's current mental health cri...
Annabel L. Kim, "Cacaphonies: The Excremental Canon of French Literature" (U Minnesota Press, 2022)
May 14, 2023 08:00 - 56 minutesAnnabel Kim's second book*, Cacaphonies: The Excremental Canon of French Literature (University of Minnesota Press, 2022) digs into fecal matter as a preoccupation of modern French literature. Inspired by the author's observations of a certain "fecal blindness" among student and other readers of French literature, Cacaphonies examines a series of canonical authors and texts through the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in which shit plays a powerful role as the work and waste of bodies and...
Bill Steigerwald, "30 Days a Black Man: The Forgotten Story That Exposed the Jim Crow South" (Lyons Press, 2017)
May 13, 2023 08:00 - 46 minutesThe dangerous, trailblazing work of a white journalist and black leader who struck a shocking early blow against legal segregation In 1948, most white people in the North had no idea how unjust and unequal daily life was for 10 million African Americans living in the Jim Crow South. Then, Ray Sprigle, a famous white journalist from Pittsburgh, went undercover and alongside Atlanta s black civil rights pioneer John Wesley Dobbs lived as a black man in the South for thirty days. His impassioned...
Serhii Plokhy, "The Russo-Ukrainian War: The Return of History" (Norton, 2023)
May 12, 2023 08:00 - 54 minutes"The Ukrainian nation will emerge from this war more united and certain of its identity than at any other point in its modern history," writes Serhii Plokhy at the end of The Russo-Ukrainian War (Norton, 2023). But that's not all, says the man acclaimed by the Financial Times as “the world's foremost historian of Ukraine” - author of Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy, The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine, and Nuclear Folly: A History of the Cuban Missile Crisis. "Ukraine’s successful resis...
Andrew R. Casper, "An Artful Relic: The Shroud of Turin in Baroque Italy" (Pennsylvania State UP, 2021)
May 11, 2023 08:00 - 56 minutesIn 1578, a fourteen-foot linen sheet bearing the faint bloodstained imprint of a human corpse was presented to tens of thousands of worshippers in Turin, Italy, as one of the original shrouds used to prepare Jesus Christ’s body for entombment. From that year into the next century, the Shroud of Turin emerged as Christianity’s preeminent religious artifact. In an unprecedented new look, Andrew R. Casper sheds new light on one of the world’s most famous and controversial religious objects. Sinc...
Benjamin Balint, "Bruno Schulz: An Artist, a Murder, and the Hijacking of History" (Norton, 2023)
May 10, 2023 08:00 - 34 minutesThe twentieth-century artist Bruno Schulz was born an Austrian, lived as a Pole, and died a Jew. First a citizen of the Habsburg monarchy, he would, without moving, become the subject of the West Ukrainian People’s Republic, the Second Polish Republic, the USSR, and, finally, the Third Reich. Yet to use his own metaphor, Schulz remained throughout a citizen of the Republic of Dreams. He was a master of twentieth-century imaginative fiction who mapped the anxious perplexities of his time; Isaa...
Karin Chenoweth, "Districts That Succeed: Breaking the Correlation Between Race, Poverty, and Achievement" (Harvard Education Press, 2021)
May 09, 2023 08:00 - 47 minutesIn Districts That Succeed: Breaking the Correlation Between Race, Poverty, and Achievement (Harvard Education Press, 2021), long-time education writer Karin Chenoweth turns her attention from effective schools to effective districts. Leveraging new, cutting-edge national research on district performance as well as in-depth reporting, Chenoweth profiles five districts that have successfully broken the correlation between race, poverty, and achievement. Focusing on high performing or rapidly im...
Ewelina U. Ochab and David Alton, "State Responses to Crimes of Genocide: What Went Wrong and How to Change It" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022)
May 08, 2023 08:00 - 49 minutesIn State Responses to Crimes of Genocide: What Went Wrong and How to Change it (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022) Dr Ewelina U. Ochab and Lord Alton of Liverpool bring together ongoing situations of genocide around the globe. Foregrounding the testimonies of victims, the authors' multiple visits to the aftermath of atrocities, and the countless actions taken by Lord Alton in British Parliament over his 40 year political career, this book is a chilling but essential read which compels a response. Atro...
Stephen G. Post, "Dignity for Deeply Forgetful People: How Caregivers Can Meet the Challenges of Alzheimer's Disease" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2022)
May 07, 2023 08:00 - 53 minutesHow do we approach a "deeply forgetful" loved one so as to notice and affirm their continuing self-identity? For three decades, Stephen G. Post has worked around the world encouraging caregivers to become more aware of--and find renewed hope in--surprising expressions of selfhood despite the challenges of cognitive decline. In Dignity for Deeply Forgetful People: How Caregivers Can Meet the Challenges of Alzheimer's Disease (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2022), Post offers new perspectives ...
Stephen Roach, "Accidental Conflict: America, China, and the Clash of False Narratives" (Yale UP, 2022)
May 06, 2023 08:00 - 53 minutesDenial is a classic symptom of codependency ... Lacking a sense of self, codependent partners tend to be hypersensitive to criticism or negative feedback, preferring instead to deflect it onto others. The resulting denial fuels an escalating cycle of blame and conflict that drives codependent partners apart. Unfortunately, this progressively dysfunctional pathology applies all too well to the conflict between the United States and China. The United States sees its trade deficit as China’s fau...
Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson, "Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity" (PublicAffairs, 2023)
May 05, 2023 08:00 - 46 minutesPower and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity (PublicAffairs, 2023) is a groundbreaking work by bestselling authors Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson, in which they challenge conventional wisdom about the role of technology in driving prosperity. The authors argue that technology is not a neutral force working in the public interest but is shaped by the interests and beliefs of the powerful. Those who control technology are the ones who benefit from it, leaving ...
Cedric Johnson, "After Black Lives Matter: Policing and Anti-Capitalist Struggle" (Verso, 2023)
May 04, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourThe historic uprising in the wake of the murder of George Floyd transformed the way Americans and the world think about race and policing. Why did it achieve so little in the way of substantive reforms? After Black Lives Matter: Policing and Anti-Capitalist Struggle (Verso, 2023) argues that the failure to leave an institutional residue was not simply due to the mercurial and reactive character of the protests. Rather, the core of the movement itself failed to locate the central racial injust...
Henrik Örnebring and Michael Karlsson, "Journalistic Autonomy: The Genealogy of a Concept" (U Missouri Press, 2022)
May 03, 2023 08:00 - 40 minutesJournalists around the world agree that autonomy is central to their work, but what exactly is it journalists should be autonomous from, and for what should they use this autonomy? Henrik Örnebring and Michael Karlsson discuss their book Journalistic Autonomy: The Genealogy of a Concept (University of Missouri Press, 2022), which traces the genealogy of the idea of journalistic autonomy from the press freedom debates of the 17th century up to the digital, networked world of the 21st century. ...
James Charney, "Madness at the Movies: Understanding Mental Illness through Film" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2023)
May 02, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourThe study of classic and contemporary films can provide a powerful avenue to understand the experience of mental illness. In Madness at the Movies: Understanding Mental Illness through Film (Johns Hopkins UP, 2023), James Charney, MD, a practicing psychiatrist and long-time cinephile, examines films that delve deeply into characters' inner worlds, and he analyzes moments that help define their particular mental illness. Based on the highly popular course that Charney taught at Yale University...
Chandra Mallampalli, "South Asia's Christians: Between Hindu and Muslim" (Oxford UP, 2023)
May 01, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourSouth Asia is home to more than a billion Hindus and half a billion Muslims. But the region is also home to substantial Christian communities, some dating almost to the earliest days of the faith. The stories of South Asia’s Christians are vital for understanding the shifting contours of World Christianity, precisely because of their history of interaction with members of these other religious traditions. In this broad, accessible overview of South Asian Christianity, Chandra Mallampalli show...
Annie Zaleski, "Lady Gaga: Applause" (Palazzo Editions, 2022)
April 30, 2023 08:00 - 52 minutesAs one of the world's best-selling musicians, Lady Gaga has set the musical bar high. Since her debut album, The Fame (2008), she has sold more than 124 million records and scooped numerous awards, including twelve Grammy Awards and eighteen MTV Music Video Awards. Yet she is much more than a musician. At the helm of the Haus of Gaga--a close-knit circle of behind-the-scenes creatives--Lady Gaga is a performance artist like no other; her forward-thinking fashions and innovations mark her out ...
Craig Leonard, "Uncommon Sense: Aesthetics after Marcuse" (MIT Press, 2022)
April 29, 2023 08:00 - 54 minutesIn Uncommon Sense: Aesthetics after Marcuse (MIT Press, 2022), Craig Leonard argues for the contemporary relevance of the aesthetic theory of Herbert Marcuse, an original member of the Frankfurt School and icon of the New Left, while also acknowledging his philosophical limits. This account reinvigorates Marcuse for contemporary readers, putting his aesthetic theory into dialogue with anti-capitalist activism. Craig Leonard speaks to Pierre d’Alancaisez about anti-art, habit, the practice of ...
The Future of Germs: A Discussion with Jonathan Kennedy
April 28, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourHave germs or humans done the most to shape the world’s history? Did Homo Sapiens get the better of the Neanderthals because of superior brainpower or because of better resistance to some infectious disease? And are germs part of the story behind the fall of Rome and rise of Islam? Owen Bennett Jones talks germs with Jonathan Kennedy of London University. Kennedy is the author of Pathogenesis: A History of the World in Eight Plagues (Crown Publishing, 2023). Owen Bennett-Jones is a freelance ...
Elaine H. Ecklund and David R. Johnson, "Varieties of Atheism in Science" (Oxford UP, 2021)
April 27, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourNot all atheists are New Atheists, but thanks in large part to the prominence and influence of New Atheists such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens, New Atheism has claimed the pulpit of secularity in Western society. New Atheists have given voice to marginalized nonreligious individuals and underscored the importance of science in society. They have also advanced a derisive view of religion and forcefully argued that science and religion are intrinsicall...
Alan Lightman, "The Transcendent Brain: Spirituality in the Age of Science" (Pantheon, 2023)
April 26, 2023 08:00 - 30 minutesAre science and spirituality incompatible? From the acclaimed author of Einstein’s Dreams comes a rich, fascinating answer to that question... Gazing at the stars, falling in love, or listening to music, we sometimes feel a transcendent connection with a cosmic unity and things larger than ourselves. But these experiences are not easily understood by science, which holds that all things can be explained in terms of atoms and molecules. Is there space in our scientific worldview for these spir...
Beth Bailey, "An Army Afire: How the US Army Confronted Its Racial Crisis in the Vietnam Era" (UNC Press, 2023)
April 25, 2023 08:00 - 44 minutesBy the Tet Offensive in early 1968, what had been widely heralded as the best qualified, best-trained army in US history was descending into crisis as the Vietnam War raged without end. Morale was tanking. AWOL rates were rising. And in August of that year, a group of Black soldiers seized control of the infamous Long Binh Jail, burned buildings, and beat a white inmate to death with a shovel. The days of "same mud, same blood" were over, and by the end of the decade, a new generation of Blac...