Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchOn 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…
3 weeks, 4 days ago
Gijs Kruijtzer, "Justifying Transgression: Muslims, Christians, and the Law - 1200 to 1700" (de Gruyter, 2023)
How do people justify what others see as transgression? Taking that question to the Persian-Muslim and Latin-Christian worlds over the period 1200 to…
3 weeks, 4 days ago
S. D. Ellison, "Hope for a New David in the Psalter's Narrative Impulse: Reading the Psalms as Utopian Literature" (Fortress Academic, 2025)
Does the Psalter have a unified theme or message? Davy Ellison says, “Yes!” In his new book Hope for a New David in the Psalter's Narrative Impulse:…
3 weeks, 4 days ago
Crystal Simone Smith, "Common Sense (1776), Addressed to Today's Citizen's of America: An Erasure" (Beacon, 2026)
This powerful work by award-winning poet Crystal Simone Smith exposes the uncomfortable truth about America’s founding text: while Common Sense is ce…
3 weeks, 4 days ago
Hsuan L Hsu, "Olfactory Worldmaking" (U Minnesota Press, 2026)
Episode 387
Smell is a vital, if underappreciated, medium through which we inhabit and imagine the world. In Olfactory Worldmaking (University of Minnesota Press…
3 weeks, 5 days ago
J. S. Nelson, "Business Ethics: What Everyone Needs to Know" (Oxford UP, 2021)
Episode 41
The book places special emphasis on the relationship between corporations, managers, and shareholders. Drawing on Lynn Stout’s influential work on co…
3 weeks, 5 days ago
Nana Osei-Opare, "Socialist De-Colony: Black and Soviet Entanglements in Ghana's Cold War" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
Episode 166
Led by the charismatic Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana won its political independence from the United Kingdom in 1957. It precipitated both the dying spiral of …
3 weeks, 5 days ago
Claire Goldstein, "Sun King's Cosmos: Comets and the Cultural Imagination of Seventeenth-Century France" (Northwestern UP, 2025)
Episode 167
In the Sun King's Cosmos: Comets and the Cultural Imagination of Seventeenth-Century France (Northwestern University Press 2025) explores the relatio…
3 weeks, 5 days ago
The Remarkable Life and Afterlife of Sholem Aleichem
Novelist, playwright, journalist, essayist, and editor, Sholem Aleichem was one of the founding giants of modern Yiddish literature. The creator of a…
3 weeks, 5 days ago
Esther Goldenberg, "Song of the Bluebird" (Row House, 2026)
Much of history has revolved around the journeys, challenges, and relationships, of men, but Serrah, daughter of Asher describes the teachings of her…
3 weeks, 5 days ago