Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchRobert D. Kaplan, "The Loom of Time: Between Empire and Anarchy, from the Mediterranean to China" (Random House, 2023)
Episode 182
The Middle East remains one of the world’s most complicated, thorny—and, uncharitably, unstable—parts of the world, as countless headlines make clear…
2 years ago
Eric Hoffer's "The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements" (1951)
Episode 117
A stevedore on the San Francisco docks in the 1940s, who eventually taught at the University of California at Berkeley, Eric Hoffer wrote philosophic…
2 years ago
Hume, the Epicureans, and the Origins of Liberalism
Episode 103
Enlightenment philosopher David Hume enjoyed a tremendous influence on intellectual history. What did Hume believe, why was it so controversial at th…
2 years ago
Sumita Pahwa, "Politics as Worship: Righteous Activism and the Egyptian Muslim Brothers" (Syracuse UP, 2023)
Episode 711
Despite expectations that the deeply held political and religious organizing principles at the heart of the Muslim Brotherhood would prove incompatib…
2 years ago
Christopher Michael Blakley, "Empire of Brutality: Enslaved People and Animals in the British Atlantic World" (Louisiana State UP, 2023)
Episode 712
Historians of early America, slavery, early African American history, the history of science, and environmental history have interrogated the complex…
2 years ago
Annika Schmeding, "Sufi Civilities: Religious Authority and Political Change in Afghanistan" (Stanford UP, 2023)
Episode 328
Annika Schmeding’s new book Sufi Civilities: Religious Authority and Political Change in Afghanistan (Stanford UP, 2023) is a deeply sensitive and ri…
2 years ago
Jonathan W. Hackett, "Theory of Irregular War" (McFarland, 2024)
Episode 232
From Afghanistan to Angola, Indonesia to Iran, and Colombia to Congo, violent reactions erupt, states collapse, and militaries relentlessly pursue op…
2 years ago
Marc Edelman, "Peasant Politics of the Twenty-First Century: Transnational Social Movements and Agrarian Change" (Cornell UP, 2024)
Episode 213
Peasant Politics of the Twenty-First Century: Transnational Social Movements and Agrarian Change (Cornell University Press, 2024) by Dr. Marc Edelman…
2 years ago
Matthieu Grandpierron, "Nostalgic Virility as a Cause of War: How Leaders of Great Powers Cope with Status Decline" (McGill-Queen's Press, 2024)
Episode 92
Why do great powers go to war? Why are non-violent, diplomatic options not prioritised? Nostalgic Virility as a Cause of War: How Leaders of Great Po…
2 years ago
Rina Verma Williams, "Marginalized, Mobilized, Incorporated: Women and Religious Nationalism in Indian Democracy" (Oxford UP, 2023)
Episode 223
How has the participation of women in Hindu nationalist politics in India changed over time? More broadly, what has their changing participation mean…
2 years ago