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18,660 episodes - English - Latest episode: 5 days ago - ★★★★ - 128 ratingsInterviews with Authors about their New Books
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Episodes
Richard M. Jaffe, "Seeking Sakyamuni: South Asia in the Formation of Modern Japanese Buddhism" (U Chicago Press, 2019)
May 05, 2024 08:00 - 1 hourThough fascinated with the land of their tradition’s birth, virtually no Japanese Buddhists visited the Indian subcontinent before the nineteenth century. In the richly illustrated Seeking Śākyamuni: South Asia in the Formation of Modern Japanese Buddhism (U Chicago Press, 2019), Richard M. Jaffe reveals the experiences of the first Japanese Buddhists who traveled to South Asia in search of Buddhist knowledge beginning in 1873. Analyzing the impact of these voyages on Japanese conceptions of ...
Lisa A. Kirschenbaum, "Soviet Adventures in the Land of the Capitalists: Ilf and Petrov's American Road Trip" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
May 05, 2024 08:00 - 1 hourIn 1935, two Soviet satirists, Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov, undertook a 10,000-mile American road trip from New York to Hollywood and back. They immortalised their journey in a popular travelogue entitled One-storied America (published as Little Golden America in the US), a suite of newspaper articles, and a series of photographs. In Soviet Adventures in the Land of the Capitalists: Ilf and Petrov's American Road Trip (Cambridge UP, 2024), Lisa A. Kirschenbaum reconstructs this epic journey, ...
Salar Mameni, "Terracene: A Crude Aesthetics" (Duke UP, 2023)
May 05, 2024 08:00 - 1 hourIn Terracene: A Crude Aesthetics (Duke UP, 2023), Salar Mameni historicizes the popularization of the scientific notion of the Anthropocene alongside the emergence of the global war on terror. Mameni theorizes the Terracene as an epoch marked by a convergence of racialized militarism and environmental destruction. Both the Anthropocene and the war on terror centered the antagonist figures of the Anthropos and the terrorist as responsible for epochal changes in the new geological and geopoliti...
Sydney Stern, "The Brothers Mankiewicz: Hope, Heartbreak, and Hollywood Classics" (U Mississippi Press, 2019)
May 05, 2024 08:00 - 1 hourHerman J. (1897–1953) and Joseph L. Mankiewicz (1909–1993) wrote, produced, and directed over 150 pictures. With Orson Welles, Herman wrote the screenplay for Citizen Kane and shared the picture’s only Academy Award. Joe earned the second pair of his four Oscars for writing and directing All About Eve, which also won Best Picture. In The Brothers Mankiewicz: Hope, Heartbreak, and Hollywood Classics (University of Mississippi Press, 2019), Sydney Stern draws on interviews, letters, diaries, an...
Gretchen Felker-Martin, "Cuckoo" (Tor Nightfire, 2024)
May 05, 2024 08:00 - 22 minutesToday I talked to Gretchen Felker-Martin about Cuckoo (Tor Nightfire, 2024). From Gretchen Felker-Martin, the acclaimed author of Manhunt, comes a vicious new novel about a group of teens who must stay true to themselves while in a conversion camp from hell. Something evil is buried deep in the desert. It wants your body. It wears your skin. In the summer of 1995, seven queer kids abandoned by their parents at a remote conversion camp came face to face with it. They survived--but at Camp Reso...
Donald Stoker, "Why America Loses Wars: Limited War and US Strategy from the Korean War to the Present" (Cambridge UP, 2019)
May 05, 2024 08:00 - 46 minutesIn this provocative challenge to United States policy and strategy, former Professor of Strategy & Policy at the US Naval War College, and author or editor of eleven books, Dr. Donald Stoker argues that America endures endless wars because its leaders no longer know how to think about war in strategic terms and he reveals how ideas on limited war and war in general have evolved against the backdrop of American conflicts in Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq. These ideas, he shows, were and are flawed a...
Julie Carpenter, "Harry and the Highwire: Houdini's First Amazing Act" (Green Bean Books, 2024)
May 04, 2024 08:00 - 50 minutesIn this interview, we celebrate Julie Carpenter's first picture book, Harry and the Highwire: Houdini's First Amazing Act (Laura Catalán, illustrator), published by Green Been Books, May, 2024). Before deciding to write for children, Julie was a journalist, writer and editor for over 20 years.In our conversation we talk about the magic of writing, the magic of picture books, and the magical life of Harry Houdini. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show ...
Jaakko Stenros and Markus Montola, "The Rule Book: The Building Blocks of Games" (MIT Press, 2024)
May 04, 2024 08:00 - 25 minutesHow games are built on the foundations of rules, and how rules—of which there are only five kinds—really work. Board games to sports, digital games to party games, gambling to role-playing games. They all share one thing in common: rules. Indeed, rules are the one and only thing game scholars agree is central to games. But what, in fact, are rules? In The Rule Book: The Building Blocks of Games (MIT Press, 2024), Jaakko Stenros and Markus Montola explore how different kinds of rules work as b...
Reiki and the Subtle Body, with Justin B. Stein
May 04, 2024 08:00 - 1 hourDr Pierce Salguero sits down with Justin B. Stein, a specialist in modern Japanese religion and the preeminent historian of Reiki. We discuss Justin’s new book, Alternate Currents: Reiki’s Circulation in the Twentieth-Century North Pacific (U Hawaii Press, 2023), about the transnational origins of Reiki, and also get into his perspective as a both a scholar and a Reiki practitioner. Along the way, we ask what Reiki has to do with Buddhism, what subtle energy feels like up close, and what kind...
Harris Mylonas and Maya Tudor, "Varieties of Nationalism: Communities, Narratives, Identities" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
May 04, 2024 08:00 - 45 minutesNationalism has long been a normatively and empirically contested concept, associated with democratic revolutions and public goods provision, but also with xenophobia, genocide, and wars. Moving beyond facile distinctions between 'good' and 'bad' nationalisms, Varieties of Nationalism: Communities, Narratives, Identities (Cambridge University Press 2023) argues that nationalism is an empirically variegated ideology. Definitional disagreements, Eurocentric conceptualizations, and linear associ...
Mateo Jarquín, "The Sandinista Revolution: A Global Latin American History" (UNC Press, 2024)
May 04, 2024 08:00 - 33 minutesThe Sandinista Revolution and its victory against the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua gripped the United States and the world in the 1980s. But as soon as the Sandinistas were voted out of power in 1990 and the Iran Contra affair ceased to make headlines, it became, in Washington at least, a thing of the past. In The Sandinista Revolution: A Global Latin American History (UNC Press, 2024), Mateo Jarquin recenters the revolution as a major episode in the history of Latin America, the interna...
Zahra Ayubi, "Gendered Morality: Classical Islamic Ethics of the Self, Family, and Society" (Columbia UP, 2019)
May 04, 2024 08:00 - 1 hourHow are notions of justice and equality constructed in Islamic virtue ethics (akhlaq)? How are Islamic virtue ethics gendered, despite their venture into perennial concerns of how best to live a good and ethical life? These are the questions that Zahra Ayubi, an assistant professor of religion at Dartmouth college, examines in her new book Gendered Morality: Classical Islamic Ethics of the Self, Family, and Society (Columbia University Press, 2019). Using akhlaq literature by al-Ghazali, Dava...
David J. Silbey and Kanisorn Wongsrichanalai, "Wars Civil and Great: The American Experience in the Civil War and World War I" (UP of Kansas, 2023)
May 04, 2024 08:00 - 1 hourThe Civil War and the Great War occupy very different places in American memory and, often, in U.S. history books. Yet, they were fought only fifty years apart and have more connections than are often recognized and remembered. During the Great War, as World War I was initially known, people from leaders to ordinary Americans still remembered the Civil War. They drew lessons, contrasts, and were generally influenced by the previous conflict. In a new edited collection, Wars Civil and Great: ...
John Powers, "Technology and the Making of Experimental Film Culture" (Oxford UP, 2023)
May 04, 2024 08:00 - 54 minutesThe Bolex camera, 16mm reversal film stocks, commercial film laboratories, and low-budget optical printers were the small-gauge media technologies that provided the infrastructure for experimental filmmaking at the height of its cultural impact. Technology and the Making of Experimental Film Culture (Oxford University Press, 2023) by Dr. John Powers examines how the avant-garde embraced these material resources and invested them with meanings and values adjacent to those of semiprofessional f...
Patrick Humphries, "Cleopatra and the Undoing of Hollywood: How One Film Almost Sunk the Studios" (History Press, 2023)
May 04, 2024 08:00 - 53 minutesThe astonishing behind-the-scenes story of the 1963 film Cleopatra and how it changed the face of Hollywood makes it one of the most fabled films of all time. Starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, the film’s making soon became a cautionary tale, for the lavish extravagance of production on Cleopatra all but bankrupted 20th Century Fox and almost singlehandedly set in motion the decline of the major Hollywood movie studios. By the time the film was finally released, 20th Century Fox a...
Ketaki Chowkhani and Craig Wynne, "Singular Selves: An Introduction to Singles Studies" (Routledge, 2024)
May 04, 2024 08:00 - 38 minutesSingular Selves: An Introduction to Singles Studies (Routledge, 2024) edited By Ketaki Chowkhani and Craig Wynne examines, for perhaps the first time, singlehood at the intersections of race, media, language, culture, literature, space, health, and life satisfaction. It adopts an interdisciplinary approach, borrowing from sociology, literary studies, medical humanities, race studies, linguistics, demographic studies, and critical geography to understand singlehood in the world today. This col...
The Contagion of Covid Policy: Dr. Jay Bhattacharya on Freedom of Speech
May 03, 2024 08:00 - 55 minutesAfter a storied career as a health policy expert, Stanford Medicine's Dr. Jay Bhattacharya's work became a political focal point during the COVID-19 pandemic, when he advocated against widespread lockdowns. He co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration, an open letter signed by infectious disease epidemiologists and public health scientists which advocated for a focused protection approach to COVID-19, and the Twitter Files revealed that his Twitter account had been placed on Twitter's "bla...
Fauzia Husain, "The Stigma Matrix: Gender, Globalization, and the Agency of Pakistan's Frontline Women" (Stanford UP, 2024)
May 03, 2024 08:00 - 53 minutesAs developing states adopt neoliberal policies, more and more working-class women find themselves pulled into the public sphere. They are pressed into wage work by a privatizing and unstable job market. Likewise, they are pulled into public roles by gender mainstreaming policies that developing states must sign on to in order to receive transnational aid. Their inclusion into the political economy is very beneficial for society, but is it also beneficial for women? In The Stigma Matrix: Gend...
Robert Farley on how "Andor" recreates "The Battle of Algiers" (and it works)
May 03, 2024 08:00 - 1 hourIt’s the UConn Popcast, and today we are joined by Professor Robert Farley, author of “Andor: Star Wars Recreates the Battle of Algiers (And it Works).” We talk about how Andor, the Disney+ streamer, was deeply influenced by Gillo Pontecorvo’s 1966 movie The Battle of Algiers. Both texts tell the story of a rebellion against authoritarian colonial overlords, and both do so in a documentary style. We consider how Andor relates to other entries in the Star Wars universe, what myths and meaning ...
Illia Ponomarenko, "I Will Show You How It Was: The Story of Wartime Kyiv" (Bloomsbury, 2024)
May 03, 2024 08:00 - 45 minutesThe spring 2022 battle for Kyiv was "one of the most tragic – and the most bizarre – events in modern history," writes Illia Ponomarenko. "Outnumbered and outgunned, Ukraine sustained the most critical blow and unexpectedly delivered Russia the greatest and most defining defeat of this war. It spelt a stunning end to the Kremlin’s megalomaniac plans of an easy conquest of a 40-million-person nation. Ukraine did it alone, by itself, still with very little defence aid from the West, And that un...
John J. Berger, "Solving the Climate Crisis: Frontline Reports from the Race to Save the Earth" (Seven Stories Press, 2023)
May 03, 2024 08:00 - 47 minutesSolving the Climate Crisis: Frontline Reports from the Race to Save the Earth (Seven Stories Press, 2023) is a hopeful and critical resource that makes a convincing and detailed case that there is a path forward to save our environment. Illustrating the power of committed individuals and the necessity for collaborative government and private-sector climate action, the book focuses on three essential areas: The technological dimension move to 100% clean renewable energy as fast as we possibly...
Kristi Irene McKim, "Rushmore" (British Film Institute, 2023)
May 03, 2024 08:00 - 1 hourEarning critical acclaim and commercial success upon its 1998 release, Rushmore-the sophomore film of American auteur Wes Anderson-quickly gained the status of a cult classic. A melancholic coming-of-age story wrapped in comedy drama, Rushmore focuses on the efforts of Max Fischer (Jason Schwartzman)-a brazen and precocious fifteen-year-old-to find his way. Restless, energetic, struggling, and overcompensating for his insecurities, Max pursues a dizzying range of possible futures, leading him...
Michael Gilson, "Behind the Privet Hedge: Richard Sudell, the Suburban Garden and the Beautification of Britain" (Reaktion Books, 2024)
May 03, 2024 08:00 - 53 minutesBritain is a nation of gardeners; the suburban garden, with its roses and privet hedges, is widely admired and copied across the world. But it is little understood how millions across the nation developed an obsession with their colourful plots of land. Behind the Privet Hedge: Richard Sudell, the Suburban Garden and the Beautification of Britain (Reaktion, 2024) by Michael Gilson explores the history of this development and how, despite their stereotype as symbols of dull, middle-class confo...
Céline Bessière and Sibylle Gollac, "The Gender of Capital: How Families Perpetuate Wealth Inequality" (Harvard UP, 2023)
May 03, 2024 08:00 - 1 hourIn many countries, property law grants equal rights to men and women. Why, then, do women still accumulate less wealth than men? Combining quantitative, ethnographic, and archival research, The Gender of Capital: How Families Perpetuate Wealth Inequality (Harvard UP, 2023) explains how and why, in every class of society, women are economically disadvantaged with respect to their husbands, fathers, and brothers. The reasons lie with the unfair economic arrangements that play out in divorce pro...
Sara B. Franklin, "The Editor: How Publishing Legend Judith Jones Shaped Culture in America" (Atria, 2024)
May 03, 2024 08:00 - 26 minutesThe woman behind some of the most important authors of the 20th century—including Julia Child, Anne Frank, Edna Lewis, John Updike, and Sylvia Plath—finally gets her due in this colorful biography of legendary editor Judith Jones. When Judith Jones began working at Doubleday’s Paris office in 1949, the twenty-five-year-old spent most of her time wading through manuscripts in the slush pile until one caught her eye. She read the book in one sitting, then begged her boss to consider publishing ...
Peter J. Freeth and Rafael Treviño, "Beyond the Translator’s Invisibility: Critical Reflections and New Perspectives" (Leuven UP, 2024)
May 02, 2024 08:00 - 50 minutesThe question of whether to acknowledge a text as a translation and thereby bring attention to the translator’s role has been a central topic in discussions on translation throughout history. While the concept of translator visibility has gained significant prominence in translation studies, it has been criticized for its vagueness, adaptability, and focus on literary contexts. Peter J. Freeth and Rafael Treviño’s Beyond the Translator’s Invisibility: Critical Reflections and New Perspectives ...
Nancy M. Martin, "Mirabai: The Making of a Saint" (Oxford UP, 2023)
May 02, 2024 08:00 - 47 minutesMirabai, an iconic sixteenth-century Indian poet-saint, is renowned for her unwavering love of God, her disregard for social hierarchies and gendered notions of honor and shame, and her challenge to familial, feudal, and religious authorities. Defying attempts to constrain and even kill her, she could not be silenced. Though verifiable facts regarding her life are few, her fame spread across social, linguistic, and religious boundaries, and stories about her multiplied across the subcontinent...
Nadine A. Sinno, "A War of Colors: Graffiti and Street Art in Postwar Beirut" (U Texas Press, 2024)
May 02, 2024 08:00 - 35 minutesOver the last two decades in Beirut, graffiti makers have engaged in a fierce “war of colors,” seeking to disrupt and transform the city’s physical and social spaces. In A War of Colors: Graffiti and Street Art in Postwar Beirut (University of Texas Press, 2024), Dr. Nadine Sinno examines how graffiti and street art have been used in postwar Beirut to comment on the rapidly changing social dynamics of the country and region. Analysing how graffiti makers can reclaim and transform cityscapes t...
History, Data Science and Journeys of Discovery with Francisco Ramos
May 02, 2024 08:00 - 1 hourI had the pleasure of talking to Francisco Ramos about how his study of history shaped his approach to data science, and public policy, and his efforts to scale institutionally driven social change. For Francisco, immersion in history began as a personal project of self-discovery. It evolved into a set of tools that he uses and perfects to understand the impact of policies and institutions on society. We talk about the past, present, and future and research paradigms. We discuss the intimate...
Leading from the Margins: College Leadership from Unexpected Places
May 02, 2024 08:00 - 56 minutesToday’s book is: Leading From the Margins: College Leadership from Unexpected Places (Johns Hopkins UP, 2024), by Dr. Mary Dana Hinton, which is a guide to why people from marginalized backgrounds may be uniquely qualified to become effective higher education leaders―and how they can get there. Students and faculty in higher education increasingly reflect more diverse backgrounds, but this diversity remains rare in many leadership roles. In Leading from the Margins, Dr. Hinton celebrates the ...
Jen Stout, "Night Train to Odesa: Covering the Human Cost of Russia's War" (Polygon, 2024)
May 02, 2024 08:00 - 45 minutesAs a teenager in Shetland, Jen Stout fell in love with Russia and, later, Ukraine – their languages, cultures, and histories. Although life kept getting in the way, she eventually managed to pause her BBC career and take up a nine-month scholarship to live and work in Russia. Unfortunately, this dream only came true in November 2021, as Russian troops massed on Ukraine’s borders. Three months later, she left Russia but only got as far as Vienna before heading back into Ukraine via Romania wit...
Crystal Wilkinson, "Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts: Stories and Recipes from Five Generations of Black Country Cooks" (Clarkson Potter, 2023)
May 02, 2024 08:00 - 47 minutesYears ago, when O. Henry Prize-winning writer Crystal Wilkinson was baking a jam cake, she felt her late grandmother’s presence. She soon realized that she was not the only cook in her kitchen; there were her ancestors, too, stirring, measuring, and braising alongside her. These are her kitchen ghosts, five generations of Black women who settled in Appalachia and made a life, a legacy, and a cuisine. An expert cook, Wilkinson shares nearly forty family recipes rooted deep in the past, full of...
Harry Pettit, "The Labor of Hope:: Meritocracy and Precarity in Egypt" (Stanford UP, 2023)
May 02, 2024 08:00 - 56 minutesCapitalism is not only an economic system but also a system of production and allocation of hope. In Egypt, a generation of young men desire fulfilling employment, meaningful relationships, and secure family life, yet find few paths to achieve this. In The Labor of Hope:: Meritocracy and Precarity in Egypt (Stanford UP, 2023), Harry Pettit follows these educated but underemployed men as they struggle to establish careers and build satisfying lives. In so doing, this book reveals the lived co...
Katie Gee Salisbury, "Not Your China Doll: The Wild and Shimmering Life of Anna May Wong" (Dutton, 2024)
May 02, 2024 08:00 - 46 minutesIn 2022, the U.S. Mint released the first batch of its American Women Quarters series, celebrating the achievements of U.S. women throughout its history. The first set of five included Maya Angelou, Sally Ride…and Anna May Wong, the first Asian-American to ever appear on U.S. currency. Katie Gee Salisbury takes on Anna May Wong’s life in her book Not Your China Doll: The Wild and Shimmering Life of Anna May Wong (Dutton, 2024). The biography takes readers through Wong’s life, from her start i...
Shu Yang, "Untamed Shrews: Negotiating New Womanhood in Modern China" (Cornell UP, 2023)
May 02, 2024 08:00 - 1 hourIf you are familiar with traditional Chinese literature, you have likely come across the figure of the “shrew,” a morally threatening woman who is either transgressive and polluting, promiscuous, or violent (or perhaps a combination of all three). Scholars of literature typically write about how this archetype faded out after 1911, while the figure of the more ‘modern’ “new woman” came to dominate. In Untamed Shrews: Negotiating New Womanhood in Modern China (Cornell University Press, 2023), ...
On "Frugality" in Acharei Mot
May 02, 2024 08:00 - 29 minutesModya and David begin this week a focus on the trait of frugality, the careful shepherding of one's resources, monetary and otherwise. The Torah portion under consideration is Acharei Mot (Leviticus 16:1-18:30). Modya and David explore how the careful allocation and conservation of resources can help to create a balance between the divine and animal energies which comprise the human being and human societies. The rite of the scapegoat is also discussed as a way to recognize, honor, and maint...
Impactos ambientales del crecimiento económico en España. Una perspectiva histórica
May 01, 2024 08:00 - 40 minutesEn el episodio n.º 56 de TODO COMENZÓ AYER, el podcast divulgativo de la Asociación Española de Historia Económica, entrevistamos a Iñaki Iriarte-Goñi y Juan Infante-Amate, coordinadores del libro Impactos ambientales del crecimiento económico en España. Una perspectiva histórica (2024), publicado por la editorial Prensas de la Universidad de Zaragoza. Esta obra reúne a un amplio conjunto de especialistas en Historia económica y ambiental; y juntos, con diferentes enfoques metodológicos, marc...
Justin O’Connor, "Culture is Not an Industry: Reclaiming Art and Culture for the Common" (Manchester UP, 2024)
May 01, 2024 08:00 - 59 minutesAccording to Dr. Justin O’Connor, culture is at the heart of what it means to be human. But twenty-five years ago, the British government rebranded art and culture as 'creative industries', valued for their economic contribution, and set out to launch the UK as the creative workshop of a globalised world. Where does that leave art and culture now? Facing exhausted workers and a lack of funding and vision, culture finds itself in the grip of accountancy firms, creativity gurus and Ted Talkers....
J. P. Messina, "Private Censorship" (Oxford UP, 2024)
May 01, 2024 08:00 - 1 hourWhen we think of censorship, our minds might turn to state agencies exercising power to silence dissent. However, contemporary concerns about censorship arise in contexts where non-state actors suppress expression and communication. There are subtle and not-so-subtle forms of interference that come from social groups, employers, media corporations, and even search engines. Should these “new” forms of censorship alarm us? Should we assess them in ways that mirror our typical views about state-...
The Rhetoric of Crisis in Israel-Palestine: A Discussion with Amos Goldberg
May 01, 2024 08:00 - 51 minutesThis week, RBI Director John Torpey speaks with Amos Goldberg, Professor of Holocaust History at the Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, about the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas. Among other rhetorical aspects of the conflict, Goldberg reflects on the meaning of such slogans as “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” They also discuss the question whether Israel is committing genocide and what that means. Finally, the c...
Hanne Elliot Fønss Nielsen, "Brand Antarctica: How Global Consumer Culture Shapes Our Perceptions of the Ice Continent" (U Nebraska Press, 2023)
May 01, 2024 08:00 - 1 hourAntarctica is, and has always been, very much “for sale.” Whales, seals, and ice have all been marketed as valuable commodities, but so have the stories of explorers. The modern media industry developed in parallel with land-based Antarctic exploration, and early expedition leaders needed publicity to generate support for their endeavours. Their lectures, narratives, photographs, and films were essentially advertisements for their adventures. At the same time, popular media began to use the n...
Renée Bergland, "Natural Magic: Emily Dickinson, Charles Darwin, and the Dawn of Modern Science" (Princeton UP, 2024)
May 01, 2024 08:00 - 39 minutesEmily Dickinson and Charles Darwin were born at a time when the science of studying the natural world was known as natural philosophy, a pastime for poets, priests, and schoolgirls. The world began to change in the 1830s, while Darwin was exploring the Pacific aboard the Beagle and Dickinson was a student in Amherst, Massachusetts. Poetry and science started to grow apart, and modern thinkers challenged the old orthodoxies, offering thrilling new perspectives that suddenly felt radical--and t...
Catherine Ceniza Choy, "Asian American Histories of the United States" (Beacon Press, 2022)
May 01, 2024 08:00 - 49 minutesTo begin the celebration of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, this episode features a conversation with Dr. Catherine Ceniza Choy about her book Asian American Histories of the United States (Beacon Press, 2022). Choy’s study identifies pivotal years in Asian American history as the focus of her eight chapters, which includes the beginning of Asian exclusionary policy with the Page Law in 1875, the rapid changes of 1965 and 1969, which saw a growing Asian America in understanding and dem...
Jennifer M. Black, "Branding Trust: Advertising and Trademarks in Nineteenth-Century America" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2023)
May 01, 2024 08:00 - 56 minutesIn the early nineteenth century, the American commercial marketplace was a chaotic, unregulated environment in which knock-offs and outright frauds thrived. Appearances could be deceiving, and entrepreneurs often relied on their personal reputations to close deals and make sales. Rapid industrialization and expanding trade routes opened new markets with enormous potential, but how could distant merchants convince potential customers, whom they had never met, that they could be trusted? Throu...
Nietzsche Now! with Glenn Wallis
May 01, 2024 08:00 - 1 hourWhat would Nietzsche say… about today’s divisive issues and debates? I spoke with Glenn Wallis, author of the new book, Nietzsche Now!, on how the Great Immoralist guides us in understanding democracy, identity, civilization, consciousness, religion, and other urgent topics of our time. Wallis identifies six guiding principles in Nietzsche’s work that help navigate today’s concerns: curiosity, humor, courage, distance, solitude, and humor. Steeped in Nietzsche but never academic, dogmatic, or...
Bryan K. Miller, "Xiongnu: The World's First Nomadic Empire" (Oxford UP, 2024)
May 01, 2024 08:00 - 1 hourIn Xiongnu: The World’s First Nomadic Empire (Oxford UP, 2024), Bryan K. Miller weaves together archaeology and history to chart the course of the Xiongnu empire, which controlled the Eastern Eurasian steppe from ca. 200 BCE to 100 CE. Through a close analysis of both material artifacts and textual sources, Miller centers the nomadic perspective, showcasing the flexibility, resilience, and mobility of this steppe regime. Comprehensive and wide-reaching, Xiongnu explores the rise of the empir...
The Shanghai Alliance of Multilingual Researchers
May 01, 2024 08:00 - 21 minutesYixi (Isabella) Qiu speaks with Professor Yongyan Zheng about The Shanghai Alliance of Multilingual Researchers. The interview explores the Alliance’s origins, research themes, and future directions. The episode not only highlights the significant contributions of this dynamic research group but also provides a glimpse into the personal and professional journeys that have shaped this academic endeavor. For additional resources, show notes, and transcripts, go here. Learn more about your ad ch...
Mohamed Shafeeq Karinkurayil, "The Gulf Migrant Archives in Kerala: Reading Borders and Belonging" (Oxford UP, 2024)
May 01, 2024 08:00 - 42 minutesThe Indian state of Kerala is one of the largest blocs of migrants in the oil economies of the Arab Gulf. Looking closely at the cultural archives produced by and on the Gulf migrants in Malayalam -- the predominant language of Kerala -- The Gulf Migrant Archives in Kerala: Reading Borders and Belonging (Oxford UP, 2024) takes stock of circular migration beyond its economics. It combines formal and thematic analyses of photographs, films, and literature with anthropological and historical de...
Allison Schrager, "An Economist Walks Into A Brothel And Other Unexpected Places to Understand Risk" (Portfolio, 2019)
April 30, 2024 09:00 - 40 minutesWhether you are a commuter weighing options of taking the bus vs walking to get you to work on time or a military general leading troops into war, risk is something we deal with every day. Even the most cautious of us can’t opt out—the question is always which risks to take to maximize our results. But how do we know which path is correct? Enter Allison Schrager. Schrager is not a typical economist. Like others, she has spent her career assessing risk, but instead of crunching numbers or sitt...
Jaume Aurell, "What Is a Classic in History?: The Making of a Historical Canon" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
April 30, 2024 08:00 - 48 minutesWhat is a classic in historical writing? How do we explain the continued interest in certain historical texts, even when their accounts and interpretations of particular periods have been displaced or revised by newer generations of historians? How do these texts help to maintain the historiographical canon? Dr. Jaume Aurell's innovative study What Is a Classic in History?: The Making of a Historical Canon (Cambridge University Press, 2024) ranges from the heroic writings of ancient Greek his...