Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchCaillan Davenport, "Behind Caesar's Back: Rumor, Gossip, and the Making of the Roman Emperors" (Yale UP, 2026)
In Behind Caesar's Back: Rumor, Gossip, and the Making of the Roman Emperors (Yale UP, 2026), Professor Caillan Davenport presents a thrilling explor…
2 months, 4 weeks ago
Jacob Mchangama, "Free Speech: A History from Socrates to Social Media" (Basic Books, 2022)
Episode 155
Jacob Mchangama, founder and director of the think tank Justitia, has written a one-volume history of freedom of thought, which ranges from the lone…
3 months ago
Ann Komaromi, "Soviet Samizdat: Imagining a New Society" (Cornell UP, 2022)
Episode 235
Soviet Samizdat: Imagining a New Society (Cornell UP, 2022) traces the emergence and development of samizdat, a significant and distinctive phenomeno…
3 months ago
Betto van Waarden, "Politicians and Mass Media in the Age of Empire" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
How did politicians deal with mass communication in a rapidly changing society? And how did the performance of public politics both help and hinder d…
3 months, 2 weeks ago
Emily Hund, "The Influencer Industry: The Quest for Authenticity on Social Media" (Princeton UP, 2023)
Episode 57
Before there were Instagram likes, Twitter hashtags, or TikTok trends, there were bloggers who seemed to have the passion and authenticity that tradi…
3 months, 2 weeks ago
Sonia Hazard, "Empire of Print: Evangelical Power in an Age of Mass Media" (Oxford UP, 2025)
Empire of Print: Evangelical Power in an Age of Mass Media (Oxford UP, 2025) offers a fresh account of evangelical power by uncovering how the Americ…
3 months, 3 weeks ago
Noam Sienna, "Jewish Books in North Africa: Between the Early Modern and Modern Worlds" (Indiana UP, 2025)
Author Noam Sienna unveils a vast Sephardic world created by these books. This literary network transcended geographical boundaries, connecting Jewis…
3 months, 3 weeks ago
Rachel Midura, "Postal Intelligence: The Tassis Family and Communications Revolution in Early Modern Europe" (Cornell UP, 2025)
Episode 137
Rachel Midura joins Jana Byars to talk about Postal Intelligence: The Tassis Family and Communications Revolution in Early Modern Europe (Cornell UP,…
4 months ago
Megha Anwer and Anupama Arora, "Screening Precarity: Hindi Cinema and Neoliberal Crisis in Twenty-first Century India" (U Michigan Press, 2025)
Episode 305
Screening Precarity integrates a cultural analysis of film texts and history, industry transformations, and the violence and crises of political econ…
4 months ago
Pluribus Episodes 8 & 9 Analysis: It’s Over!
Episode 47
It’s The Pop Culture Professors, and we continue our analysis of Pluribus, with our thoughts on episode 8, “Charm Offensive” and episode 9, “La Chico…
4 months ago