New Books in Politics and Polemics
1,180 episodes - English - Latest episode: 7 months ago - ★★★★★ - 4 ratingsInterviews with Authors of Politics and Polemics about their New Books
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Episodes
Marco Grasso, "From Big Oil to Big Green: Holding the Oil Industry to Account for the Climate Crisis" (MIT Press, 2022)
July 13, 2023 08:00 - 35 minutesIn From Big Oil to Big Green: Holding the Oil Industry to Account for the Climate Crisis (MIT Press, 2022), Professor Marco Grasso examines the responsibility of the oil and gas industry for the climate crisis and develops a moral framework that lays out its duties of reparation and decarbonization to allay the harm it has done. By framing climate change as a moral issue and outlining the industry's obligation to tackle it, Grasso shows that Big Oil is a central, yet overlooked, agent of clim...
J. Logan Smilges, "Crip Negativity" (U of Minnesota Press, 2023)
July 12, 2023 08:00 - 57 minutesIn the thirty years since the Americans with Disabilities Act was signed into law, the lives of disabled people have not improved nearly as much as activists and politicians had hoped. In Crip Negativity (U of Minnesota Press, 2023), J. Logan Smilges shows us what’s gone wrong and what we can do to fix it. Leveling a strong critique of the category of disability and liberal disability politics, Smilges asks and imagines what horizons might exist for the liberation of those oppressed by ableis...
Emily Flitter, "The White Wall: How Big Finance Bankrupts Black America" (Atria/One Signal Publishers, 2022)
July 11, 2023 08:00 - 57 minutesIn 2018, Emily Flitter received a tip that Morgan Stanley had fired a Black employee without cause. Flitter had been searching for a way to investigate the deep-rooted racism in the American financial industry, and that one tip lit the sparkplug for a three-year journey through the shocking yet normalized corruption in our financial institutions. Examining local insurance agencies and corporate titans like JPMorgan Chase, BlackRock, and Wells Fargo and reveals the practices that have kept the...
Marcos González Hernando and Gerry Mitchell, "Uncomfortably Off: Why Higher-Income Earners Should Care about Inequality" (Policy Press, 2023)
July 08, 2023 08:00 - 43 minutesHow can we build a better social and political settlement? In Uncomfortably Off: Why the Top 10% of Earners Should Care about Inequality (Policy Press, 2023), Marcos González Hernando an Honorary Research Fellow at the UCL Social Research Institute and Postdoctoral Researcher at Universidad Diego Portale, and Gerry Mitchell a freelance policy researcher, combine a wealth of quantitative analysis with detailed fieldwork interviews to understand the top 10% of contemporary society. Broadening t...
Daniel Boyarin, "The No-State Solution: A Jewish Manifesto" (Yale UP, 2023)
July 07, 2023 08:00 - 55 minutesDaniel Boyarin's new book The No-State Solution: A Jewish Manifesto (Yale University Press, 2023) is a provocative anti-Zionist manifesto pleading for a new understanding of Jewish peoplehood and sketching an alternative vision for a Jewish future beyond the nation-state: the Diaspora nation. He aims to drive a wedge between the "nation" and the "state," only very recently conjoined, and recover a robust sense of nationalism that does not involve sovereignty. Professor emeritus of Talmudic c...
Mikhail Shishkin, "My Russia: War Or Peace?" (RiverRun Press, 2023)
July 05, 2023 08:00 - 40 minutesIn his timely My Russia: War or Peace? (RiverRun Press, 2023), Mikhail Shishkin provides a searing account of Russian political culture that explains both Putin's autocratic regime and its invasion of Ukraine. An Russian emigre who has lived in Switzerland for many years and writes in Russian and German, Shishkin traces the roots of Russia's problems, from 'Kievan Rus' through to the current Russian Federation. He explores the uneasy relationship between state and citizens, explains Russian a...
Greg Berman and Aubrey Fox, "Gradual: The Case for Incremental Change in a Radical Age" (Oxford UP, 2023)
July 05, 2023 08:00 - 54 minutesMany experts believe that we are at a fulcrum moment in history, a time that demands radical shifts in thinking and policymaking. Calls for bold change are everywhere these days, particularly on social media, but is this actually the best way to make the world a better place? In Gradual: The Case for Incremental Change in a Radical Age (Oxford UP, 2023), Greg Berman and Aubrey Fox argue that, contrary to the aspirations of activists on both the right and the left, incremental reform is the be...
Simon N. Whitney, "From Oversight to Overkill: Inside the Broken System That Blocks Medical Breakthroughs--And How We Can Fix It" (Rivertowns Books, 2023)
July 04, 2023 08:00 - 34 minutesMedical research saves lives-yet all too often, it is thwarted by a review system supposed to safeguard patients that instead creates needless delays and expense. Institutional Review Boards, which exist at every hospital and medical school that conducts medical research, have ended up imposing such complex, draconian conditions that research is frequently damaged, delayed, and distorted. This is why medical miracles like the COVID-19 vaccines, which were developed at warp speed, are far too ...
The Supreme Court's Past, Present, and Future: A Conversation with John Yoo
July 03, 2023 08:00 - 53 minutesIt has been a momentous few weeks for the Supreme Court. What better time to discuss the Court's history and future? We are therefore launching our "Summer of Law" series to shed light on the legal world . Kicking the series off is John Yoo, the Heller Professor of Law at the University of California at Berkeley. He is also a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and a Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He has written 8 books and over 100...
Ricardo Tranjan, "The Tenant Class" (Between the Lines, 2023)
July 02, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourToday I talked to Ricardo Tranjan about his book The Tenant Class (Between the Lines, 2023). It’s well known and almost taken for granted that we live in the midst of a “housing crisis”—soaring rent, persistently low vacancy rate, and deteriorating quality of existing housing stock plague renters throughout Canada. But if a crisis is defined by being sudden and often short-term, by being largely incidental and without malicious intent, and by a tendency to produce broad social solidarity, Ric...
Kevin J. Elliott, "Democracy for Busy People" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
July 01, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourJohn Dewey and Jane Addams are both credited with the claim that the cure for democracy’s ills is more democracy. The sentiment is popular to this day among democratic theorists and practitioners. The thought is that a democratic deficit lies at the root of any political and social problem that a democracy might confront. Accordingly, a good deal of work in democratic theory aims at designing new practices and institutions that can erase the deficit. But this raises a problem: The civic task ...
Why Do So Many Young People Think the Unabomber was Right?
June 30, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourDarts and Letters is creating a new podcast, Academic Edgelords. This is a scholarly podcast about scholarly provocateurs. This is a leftist podcast that takes a second look at their peer-reviewed work, and tries to see if there’s anything we might learn from arguing with them. We are hosted by: Victor Bruzzone, Gordon Katic, Matt McManus, and Ethan Xavier (AKA “Mouthy Infidel”). On this episode, we introduce our show by reading the ultimate academic edgelord: Ted Kacynski, who just died. Thi...
Jack Schneider and Jennifer Berkshire, "A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door: The Dismantling of Public Education and the Future of School" (The New Press, 2023)
June 28, 2023 08:00 - 44 minutesAcross the U.S., state legislatures-often under the cover of darkness, and usually in spite of public opposition-are passing bills that channel public dollars to private schools. These voucher schemes promise to transfer billions from state treasuries to upper-income families. But that's just the start. Opponents of public schools want to dismantle the public education system entirely. Outrageous and unfounded attacks on the schools-about Critical Race Theory, "gender ideology," and "grooming...
Nicholas Dagen Bloom, "The Great American Transit Disaster: A Century of Austerity, Auto-Centric Planning, and White Flight" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
June 27, 2023 08:00 - 36 minutesMany a scholar and policy analyst has lamented American dependence on cars and the corresponding lack of federal investment in public transportation throughout the latter decades of the twentieth century. But as Nicholas Dagen Bloom shows in The Great American Transit Disaster: A Century of Austerity, Auto-Centric Planning, and White Flight (U Chicago Press, 2023), our transit networks are so bad for a very simple reason: we wanted it this way. Focusing on Baltimore, Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit...
Sara Salman, "The Shaming State: How the U.S. Treats Citizens in Need" (NYU Press, 2023)
June 27, 2023 08:00 - 57 minutesThe Shaming State: How the U.S. Treats Citizens in Need (NYU Press, 2023) argues that Americans have been abandoned by a government that has relinquished its duties of care toward its citizens. Sara Salman describes a government that withholds care in times of need and instead shames the very citizens it claims to serve, both poor and middle class. She argues that the state does so by emphasizing personal responsibility, thus tacitly blaming the needy for relying on state programs. This blame...
Stephen Vladeck, "The Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic" (Basic Books, 2023)
June 26, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourMany people are familiar with the United States Supreme Court’s merit docket. Each case follows detailed and professional proceedings that include formal written and oral arguments. The justices’ decisions provide lengthy arguments and citations. They are freely available to the public, press, policy-makers, law makers, judges, and scholars. When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, they ruled publicly – and the press covered it extensively. But Professor Stephen Vladeck’s new b...
Bradley C. S. Watson, "Progressivism: The Strange History of a Radical Idea" (U Notre Dame Press, 2020)
June 25, 2023 08:00 - 1 hour“Only recently have scholars outside the historical profession identified progressivism for what it was and continues to be: a fundamental rupture with the roots of American order.” So writes the political scientist and theorist Bradley C. S. Watson in his 2020 book Progressivism: The Strange History of a Radical Idea (U Notre Dame Press). Watson provides an intellectual history of how historians such as Richard Hofstadter tended to underplay what a radical break the Progressive Movement was...
The Future of Leadership: A Discussion with Amanda Goodall
June 24, 2023 08:00 - 42 minutesDo experts perform better than generalists? In the midst of the fraught 2016 Brexit campaign one of the most British senior British politicians arguing that the UK should leave the EU said “I think the people in this country have had enough of experts “– and was widely derided for doing so. Amanda Goodall thinks he was wrong, as she explains to Owen Bennett-Jones. Goodall is the author of Credible: The Power of Expert Leaders (PublicAffairs, 2023). Owen Bennett-Jones is a freelance journalist...
Ngaire Naffine, "Criminal Law and the Man Problem" (Bloomsbury, 2020)
June 23, 2023 08:00 - 33 minutesMen have always dominated the most basic precepts of the criminal legal world – its norms, its priorities and its character. Men have been the regulators and the regulated: the main subjects and objects of criminal law and by far the more dangerous sex. And yet men, as men, are still hardly talked about as the determining force within criminal law or in its exegesis. Criminal Law and the Man Problem (Bloomsbury, 2020) by Dr. Ngaire Naffine brings men into sharp focus, as the pervasively power...
Postscript: Politics, Identity, and the US Supreme Court
June 23, 2023 08:00 - 59 minutesPostscript invites authors to react to contemporary political events that engage their scholarship. Since the Supreme Court is wrapping up their term, three political scientists and one law professor joined Susan to talk about the power of the Federalist Society in shaping the courts (and how lawyers might strategically use political science research to get more progressive outcomes), how race, ethnicity, and gender issues have affected the construction of the U.S. Supreme Court over time, an...
Richard Duncan, "The Money Revolution: How to Finance the Next American Century" (John Wiley & Sons, 2022)
June 21, 2023 08:00 - 55 minutesIn The Money Revolution: How to Finance the Next American Century, economist and bestselling author Richard Duncan lays out a farsighted strategy to maximize the United States' unmatched financial and technological potential. In compelling fashion, the author shows that the United States can and should invest in the industries and technologies of the future on an unprecedented scale in order to ignite a new technological revolution that would cement the country’s geopolitical preeminence, gre...
The Ascendance of Social Conservatism in the Public Square
June 20, 2023 08:00 - 55 minutesWithin political discussions on the Right, social conservatism is on the rise. Why did the Right have a libertarian phase, and why is it leaving it behind? What does social conservatism look like in the world of practical public policy, and what is its future? How do religious citizens fit within the conservative movement? Ryan Anderson '04, is the director of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a thinktank at the forefront of just such questions. After graduating from Princeton, Dr. Anderso...
Nicole Wegner, "Martialling Peace: How the Peacekeeper Myth Legitimises Warfare" (Edinburgh UP, 2023)
June 18, 2023 08:00 - 50 minutesMartialling Peace: How the Peacekeeper Myth Legitimises Warfare (Edinburgh University Press, 2023) by Dr. Nicole Wegner is not a book about peacekeeping practices. This is a book about storytelling, fantasies and the ways that people connect emotionally to myths about peacekeeping. The celebration of peacekeeping as a legitimate and desirable use of military force is expressed through the unproblematised acceptance of militarism. Introducing a novel framework – martial peace – the book offers...
Josh Milburn, "Food, Justice, and Animals: Feeding the World Respectfully" (Oxford UP, 2023)
June 15, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourHow would we eat if animals had rights? A standard assumption is that our food systems would be plant-based. But maybe we should reject this assumption. Indeed, this book argues that a future non-vegan food system would be permissible on an animal rights view. It might even be desirable. In Food, Justice, and Animals: Feeding the World Respectfully (Oxford University Press, 2023), Josh Milburn questions if the vegan food system risks cutting off many people's pursuit of the 'good life', risks...
Simon Sharpe, "Five Times Faster: Rethinking the Science, Economics, and Diplomacy of Climate Change" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
June 14, 2023 08:00 - 30 minutesWe need to act five times faster to avoid dangerous climate change. As Greenland melts, Australia burns, and greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, we think we know who the villains are: oil companies, consumerism, weak political leaders. But what if the real blocks to progress are the ideas and institutions that are supposed to be helping us? Five Times Faster: Rethinking the Science, Economics, and Diplomacy of Climate Change (Cambridge UP, 2023) is an inside story from Simon Sharpe, w...
Nate G. Hilger, "The Parent Trap: How to Stop Overloading Parents and Fix Our Inequality Crisis" (MIT Press, 2023)
June 13, 2023 08:00 - 58 minutesFew people realize that raising children is the single largest industry in the United States. Yet this vital work receives little political support, and its primary workers--parents--labor in isolation. If they ask for help, they are made to feel inadequate; there is no centralized organization to represent their interests; and there is virtually nothing spent on research and development to help them achieve their goals. It's almost as if parents are set up to fail--and the result is lost opp...
Payal Arora et al., "Feminist Futures of Work: Reimagining Labour in the Digital Economy" (Amsterdam UP, 2023)
June 12, 2023 08:00 - 40 minutesThe future of work is at the centre of debates related to the emerging digital society. Concerns range from the inclusion, equity, and dignity of those at the far end of the value chain, who participate on and off platforms, often in the shadows, invisible to policymakers, designers, and consumers. Precarity and informality characterize this largely female workforce, across sectors ranging from artisanal work to salon services to ride-hailing and construction. A feminist reimagining of the fu...
Timothy V. Kaufman-Osborn, "The Autocratic Academy: Reenvisioning Rule Within America's Universities" (Duke UP, 2023)
June 10, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourCritics of contemporary US higher education often point to the academy’s “corporatization” as one of its defining maladies. However, in The Autocratic Academy: Reenvisioning Rule Within America's Universities (Duke UP, 2023), Timothy V. Kaufman-Osborn argues that American colleges and universities have always been organized as corporations in which the power to rule is legally vested in and monopolized by antidemocratic governing boards. This institutional form, Kaufman-Osborn contends, is an...
Doug Enaa Greene, "Stalinism and the Dialectics of Saturn: Anticommunism, Marxism, and the Fate of the Soviet Union" (Lexington, 2023)
June 09, 2023 08:00 - 59 minutesAs capitalism’s popularity wanes and socialism’s popularity increases, there remains a massive shadow cast by the history of actually existing socialism, Stalin being the primary pillar. His violent rule in the form of secret police, staged trials, forced confessions and suppression of liberation for workers both in the USSR and internationally are regularly brought up as the inevitable endpoint of any political progress, socialist or otherwise. Environmental protections, affordable housing, ...
Joshua St. Pierre, "Cheap Talk: Disability and the Politics of Communication" (U MIchigan Press, 2022)
June 09, 2023 08:00 - 43 minutesIn Cheap Talk: Disability and the Politics of Communication (U Michigan Press, 2022), Joshua St. Pierre flips the script on communication disability, positioning the unruly, disabled speaker at the center of analysis to challenge the belief that more communication is unquestionably good. Working with Gilles Deleuze's suggestion that "[w]e don't suffer these days from any lack of communication, but rather from all the forces making us say things when we've nothing much to say," St. Pierre brin...
Athene Donald, "Not Just for the Boys: Why We Need More Women in Science" (Oxford UP, 2023)
June 07, 2023 08:00 - 36 minutesWhy are girls discouraged from doing science? Why do so many promising women leave science in early and mid-career? Why do women not prosper in the scientific workforce? Not Just for the Boys: Why We Need More Women in Science (Oxford UP, 2023) looks back at how society has historically excluded women from the scientific sphere and discourse, what progress has been made, and how more is still needed. Athene Donald, herself a distinguished physicist, explores societal expectations during both ...
Feminism Against Progress: A Conversation with Mary Harrington
June 06, 2023 08:00 - 50 minutesIs feminism compatible with progress? Reactionary feminist Mary Harrington thinks not. In this interview, she discusses the history of feminism, her own journey from proponent to radical opponent of progress, the impact of technology on women and society, and, of course, her new book, Feminism Against Progress (Regnery, 2023). Mary Harrington is a contributing editor at UnHerd and widely-published essayist. You can her book, Feminism Against Progress here. Learn more about your ad choices. Vi...
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...
Mapping the American Right: A Conversation with the American Enterprise Institute’s Robert Doar
June 02, 2023 08:00 - 47 minutesAnnika sits down with Robert Doar, president of the American Enterprise Institute, one of Washington D.C.'s most prominent think-tanks, to discuss the state of the American Right: what are the driving political issues of our time? What is the importance of freedom and liberty within the right? Drawing on Robert's background in poverty studies, they discuss what the Right has done right and wrong in addressing poverty, as well as Robert's time at our very own Princeton. Robert's own podcast, "...
Educating for Solitude: A Conversation with William Deresiewicz
June 01, 2023 08:00 - 49 minutesWhat kind of person is our education system designed to create? Best-selling author and award-winning essayist William Deresiewicz discusses the failures of our higher education system, how it mis-conditions our elite, and fails to value the humanities, as well as his latest collection of essays, The End of Solitude. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics
Defining Man and Woman: A Conversation with Abigail Favale
May 31, 2023 14:54 - 49 minutesAmidst fraught debates about what gender is, and how it fits into feminism, Annika sits down with Dr. Abigail Favale, an English professor specializing in gender studies and feminist literary criticism turned Catholic convert. Dr. Favale is now a professor and writer at the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame, and the author of The Genesis of Gender: A Christian Theory. Her latest essay, "From Post-Christian Feminism to Catholicism," is here. Learn more about y...
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, ...
Hilary Frances Aked, "Friends of Israel: The Backlash Against Palestine Solidarity" (Verso, 2023)
May 30, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourIs there such a thing as “the Israel lobby,” and how powerful is it really? Hilary Frances Aked's book Friends of Israel: The Backlash Against Palestine Solidarity (Verso, 2023) provides a forensically researched account of the activities of Israel's advocates in Britain, showing how they contribute to maintaining Israeli apartheid. The book traces the history and changing fortunes of key actors within the British Zionist movement in the context of the Israeli government's contemporary effort...
Arthur Snell, "How Britain Broke the World: War, Greed and Blunders from Kosovo to Afghanistan (1997-2021)" (Canbury Press, 2022)
May 29, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourArthur Snell's book How Britain Broke the World: War, Greed and Blunders from Kosovo to Afghanistan (1997-2021) (Canbury Press, 2022) critically assesses UK foreign policy over the past 25 years, from Kosovo in 1998 to Afghanistan in 2021, while also scrutinising British policy towards the powerhouses of the USA, Russia, India, and China. Far from being unimportant, Snell reveals, Britain has often played a pivotal role in world affairs. For instance, London supplied the false intelligence th...
Learning for Liberation: The Life and Legacy of Paulo Freire
May 29, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourPaulo Freire offers activists and academics everywhere a lesson in what it means to be a radical intellectual. He is known as the founder of critical pedagogy, which asks teachers and learners to understand and resist their own oppression. His subversive books have been banned and burned in many countries, including his native Brazil, where the military dictatorship of the 1960s imprisoned and then exiled him. On this episode, we learn about Freire's life and the basics of his foundational te...
Kenji Yoshino and David Glasgow, "Say the Right Thing: How to Talk About Identity, Diversity, and Justice" (Atria Books, 2023)
May 28, 2023 08:00 - 34 minutesIn the current period of social and political unrest, conversations about identity are becoming more frequent and more difficult. On subjects like critical race theory, gender equity in the workplace, and LGBTQ-inclusive classrooms, many of us are understandably fearful of saying the wrong thing. That fear can sometimes prevent us from speaking up at all, depriving people from marginalized groups of support and stalling progress toward a more just and inclusive society. Kenji Yoshino and Davi...
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...
Scott Timcke, "The Political Economy of Fortune and Misfortune: Prospects for Prosperity in Our Times" (Bristol UP, 2023)
May 25, 2023 08:00 - 36 minutesLuck greatly influences a person's quality of life. Yet little of our politics looks at how institutions can amplify good or bad luck that widens social inequality. But societies can change their fortune. Too often debates about inequality focus on the accuracy of data or modelling while missing the greater point about ethics and exploitation. In the wake of growing disparity between the 1% and other classes, The Political Economy of Fortune and Misfortune: Prospects for Prosperity in Our Tim...
The Hundred Year War for the American Right: A Conversation with Matthew Continetti
May 25, 2023 08:00 - 44 minutesWhat is the American Right, where does it come from, and how has it changed over time? Journalist and author Matthew Continetti discusses his recent book: The Right: The Hundred Year War for American Conservatism. Continetti is Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and was formerly the founding editor and the editor-in-chief of the Washington Free Beacon. Previously, he was opinion editor at the Weekly Standard. He is also a contributing editor at National Review and a columnist...
Larry Kudlow on Economic Freedom from Kennedy to Reagan to Trump
May 24, 2023 08:00 - 28 minutesWith contentious midterm elections coming up fast, Annika sits down with one of the best-known commentators and participants in the American political economy over the past four decades: Larry Kudlow. Director Kudlow has had a long and storied career; in addition to great success both on Wall Street and as a political commentator, he served in the Ronald Reagan administration in 1981, and as the Director of the National Economic Council under President Trump. He currently hosts the popular La...
Alyson K. Spurgas and Zoe Meleo Erwin, "Decolonize Self-Care" (OR Books, 2022)
May 24, 2023 08:00 - 48 minutesFor twentieth-century feminists, it was a rallying cry for bodily autonomy and political power. For influencers and lifestyle brands, it’s buying fancy nutrition and body products at a premium. And it has now infiltrated nearly every food, leisure, and pop-culture space as a hugely lucrative industry. What is it? To quote a million memes: it’s called self-care. In Decolonize Self-Care (OR Books, 2023), Alyson K. Spurgas and Zoë Meleo-Erwin deliver a comprehensive sociological analysis and sca...
Reclaiming a Lost Vision of Feminism: A Conversation with Erika Bachiochi
May 23, 2023 08:00 - 54 minutesThe overturning of Roe v. Wade has led to a flurry of commentary and wondering, "Where next?" But, it also begs deeper questions: what is the history of abortion and sex-positivity within the feminist movement, and how did Roe affect our views on sex? Feminist legal scholar Dr. Erika Bachiochi is the founder and director of the Wollstonecraft Project at the Abigail Adams Institute and a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Here, she discusses these questions as well as her recent bo...
Money or Meaning? A Discussion on Choice and Restlessness with Ben and Jenna Storey
May 23, 2023 08:00 - 57 minutesWhat kinds of tools do we need to make big decisions, and why aren't our universities training us to make them? Are universities doing students a disservice by occupying them with myriads of boxes to tick? Are students right to prefer money to meaning? Madison Program alumni Ben and Jenna Storey discuss the philosophy of making choices and of restlessness, and critique the way universities treat those topics. Ben and Jenna are senior fellows at the American Enterprise Institute in the Social,...
After the Pill: A Conversation with Mary Eberstadt
May 23, 2023 08:00 - 48 minutesThe pill has rocked our society to its core: but have we fully examined all its repercussions? Influential author and essayist Mary Eberstadt thinks we've only scratched the surface; in her most recent book, Adam and Eve after the Pill, Revisited (Ignatius Press, 2023) she argues that the papal encyclical Humane Vitae predicted our deep loneliness and other modern woes. Mary Eberstadt holds the Panula Chair in Christian Culture at the Catholic information center in Washington, D.C., and is a ...
Matthew Remski et al., "Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Public Health Threat" (PublicAffairs, 2023)
May 21, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourConspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Public Health Threat (PublicAffairs, 2023) is a much-needed analysis of wellness, new age, and yoga influencers who’ve gone down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories about personal and public health. Authors Derek Beres, Matthew Remski, and Julian Walker offer a sophisticated analysis of the emotional concerns that fuel conspiracy thinking, whether among right-wing QANON alarmists or progressive back-to-earth yoga practitioners. Reli...