Podcast Episodes

Emma Heaney, "This Watery Place: Four Essays on Gestation" (Pluto Press UK, 2025)

What does it feel like to experience your body cleaving into two while public discussion of reproductive healthcare centers around the viability line: the fantasized moment when a fetus could feasibl…

Published on 3 weeks, 4 days ago

Shatema Threadcraft, "Labors of Resurrection: Black Women, Necromancy, and Morrisonian Democracy" (Oxford UP, 2025)

Western democracies are haunted. Michael Hanchard suggests that the specter of race is what haunts our democracies, but it may be more accurate to suggest that they are haunted by their own racialize…

Published on 3 weeks, 4 days ago

Julie Dobrow, "Love and Loss After Wounded Knee: A Biography of an Extraordinary Interracial Marriage" (NYU Press, 2025)

Like any set of star-crossed lovers, Elaine and Charles came from different worlds. Elaine, an acclaimed childhood poet from a remote corner of the Massachusetts Berkshires, traveled to the Dakota Te…

Published on 3 weeks, 4 days ago

Gracen Brilmyer and Lydia Tang eds., "Preserving Disability: Disability and the Archival Profession" (Library Juice Press, 2024)

A transcript of this interview is available [here]

Preserving Disability: Disability and the Archival Profession (Library Juice Press, 2024) weaves together first-person narratives and case studies c…

Published on 3 weeks, 4 days ago

Killian Clarke, "Return of Tyranny: Why Counterrevolutions Emerge and Succeed" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

Why do some revolutions fail and succumb to counterrevolutions, whereas others go on to establish durable rule?

Marshalling original data on counterrevolutions worldwide since 1900 and new evidence f…

Published on 3 weeks, 5 days ago

Yanqiu Zheng, "In Search of Admiration and Respect: Chinese Cultural Diplomacy in the United States, 1875–1974" (U Michigan Press, 2024)

What does it mean for a country to seek admiration — and what kinds of institutions try to make that admiration possible?

Yanqiu Zheng’s In Search of Admiration and Respect: Chinese Cultural Diplomac…

Published on 3 weeks, 5 days ago

Eli Clare, "Unfurl: Survivals, Sorrows, and Dreaming" (Duke UP, 2025)

A transcript of this interview is available [here]

A queer disabled love song to trees and beavers, tremors and dreams, Unfurl: Survivals, Sorrows, and Dreaming (Duke UP, 2025) explores the pulsing c…

Published on 3 weeks, 5 days ago

Can America Still Lead? Foreign Policy in an Age of Division with Joel Rubin

What happens when America loses its foreign-policy playbook? RBI acting director Eli Karetny talks with veteran diplomat and policy strategist Joel Rubin about the vacuum of strategic vision shaping …

Published on 3 weeks, 5 days ago

Carol Lilly, "Death and Burial in Socialist Yugoslavia: The Politicization of Cemeteries and Ethnic Conflict in the Balkans" (Bloomsbury, 2024).

Across the globe, memorial and grave sites are being increasingly weaponized in conflicts and politicized by parties to advance agendas. Here, Carol S. Lilly examines ideas of death, politics, memory…

Published on 3 weeks, 5 days ago

Janice M. McCabe, "Making, Keeping, and Losing Friends: How Campuses Shape College Students’ Networks" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

We’re all familiar with the sentiment that “college is the best time of your life.” Along with a newfound sense of freedom, students have a unique opportunity to forge lifelong friendships at a point…

Published on 3 weeks, 5 days ago