Podcast Episodes

Jennifer Vail, "Friction: A Biography" (Harvard UP, 2026)

Friction, the force that resists motion, is synonymous with difficulty and complication. If you’ve ever replaced tires worn smooth by the road or rea…

3 weeks, 5 days ago

Samuel Holley-Kline, "In the Shadow of El Tajín: The Political Economy of Archaeology in Modern Mexico" (U Nebraska Press, 2025)

Located in the Papantla municipality of the Mexican state of Veracruz, El Tajín is a UNESCO World Heritage site but a lesser-known tourist destinatio…

3 weeks, 5 days ago

Janet Kintner, "A Judge’s Tale: A Trailblazer Fights for her Place on the Bench" (She Writes Press, 2025)

Janet Kintner survived a difficult father and several assaults, but she didn’t let any of it stop her from pursuing law school as one of three women …

3 weeks, 5 days ago

David McCrone, "Changing Scotland: Society, Politics and Identity" (Edinburgh UP, 2025)

Scotland is a nation that has undergone significant changes over the last 50 years or so. This is, of course, true of much of the Western world but, …

3 weeks, 5 days ago

Andrew Monaghan, "Blitzkrieg and the Russian Art of War" (Manchester UP, 2025)

A cutting-edge investigation of how Russia makes war.

Russian strategy in the twenty-first century has been described in terms of 'hybrid' warfare, a…

3 weeks, 5 days ago

Twentieth Century

Twentieth Century (1934) is a screwball comedy that moves like a runaway train and we are delightfully tied to the tracks. John Barrymore’s audacious…

3 weeks, 6 days ago

Jens Ludwig, "Unforgiving Places: The Unexpected Origins of American Gun Violence" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

Disproving the popular narrative that shootings are the calculated acts of malicious or desperate people, Ludwig shows how most shootings actually gr…

3 weeks, 6 days ago

Jason Roberts, "We Stay the Same: Subsistence, Logging, and Enduring Hopes for Development in Papua New Guinea" (U Arizona Press, 2024)

An ethnography of indigenous lives amidst subsistence labor, large-scale logging, and unrealized schemes, We Stay the Same: Subsistence, Logging, and…

3 weeks, 6 days ago

Jessica Lake, "Special Damage: The Slander of Women and the Gendered History of Defamation Law" (Stanford UP, 2025)

In 1788, Mary Smith was ruined and banished from "civilised" society when her neighbor accused her of carrying a bastard child. To silence the ruinou…

3 weeks, 6 days ago

Arnoud S. Q. Visser, "On Pedantry: A Cultural History of the Know-it-All" (Princeton UP, 2025)

A lively and entertaining cultural history of a supremely annoying intellectual vice Intellectuals have long provoked scorn and irritation, even down…

3 weeks, 6 days ago