Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchMelissa Butcher, "The Trouble with Freedom: Love, Hate and America’s Future" (Manchester UP, 2026)
As Melissa Butcher puts it in her book The Trouble with Freedom: Love, Hate and America’s Future (Manchester UP, 2026) when asked to rank the importa…
5 months ago
Amir Saemi, "Morality and Revelation in Islamic Thought and Beyond: A New Problem of Evil" (Oxford UP, 2024)
Amir Saemi’s exciting book Morality and Revelation in Islamic Thought and Beyond: A New Problem of Evil (Oxford UP, 2024) is a fascinating and deeply…
5 months, 1 week ago
Peter E. Gordon, "Walter Benjamin: The Pearl Diver" (Yale UP, 2026)
Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) is widely considered one of the most creative cultural critics of the twentieth century. Esteemed for his literary acumen…
5 months, 1 week ago
Shredding Capitalism with Sven Beckert (Paul Kramer, JP)
John is joined by the brilliant and affable Paul Kramer of Vanderbilt (The Blood of Government) to discuss Capitalism: A Global History (Penguin, 202…
5 months, 1 week ago
Jeanne-Marie Jackson, "The Letter of the Law in J. E. Casely Hayford's West Africa" (Princeton UP, 2026)
The African Gold Coast writer and statesman J. E. Casely Hayford (1866–1930) was a key figure in liberal anticolonial thought as well as African and …
5 months, 1 week ago
Mark Pennington, "Foucault and Liberal Political Economy: Power, Knowledge, and Freedom" (Oxford UP, 2025)
Foucault and Liberal Political Economy: Power, Knowledge, and Freedom by Mark Pennington
This highly original and innovative book is the first to com…
5 months, 1 week ago
Ainehi Edoro, "Forest Imaginaries: How African Novels Think" (Columbia UP, 2026)
Forests in fiction are often understood simply as settings, symbols, or remnants of a premodern past. Yet many African novelists have turned to the f…
5 months, 1 week ago
Emmanuel Ofuasia, "Ìwà: the Process-Relational Dimension to African Metaphysics" (Springer, 2024)
Correction: In the interview, the host mistakenly mentioned that Prof. Ofuasia is teaching the University of Pretoria. In reality, Prof Ofuasia is cu…
5 months, 1 week ago
The Philosophy of Hope: On Immanence and Transcendence with R.J. Snell
In this third episode of Season 5, I interview Dr. R.J. Snell, a visiting instructor at Princeton University, the director of academic programs at th…
5 months, 2 weeks ago
On Trump as a “World Historical Individual” with author John B. Judis
The philosopher G.W.F. Hegel “viewed history as consisting of stages punctuated by times of upheaval,” the author John B. Judis wrote in a recent ess…
5 months, 2 weeks ago