Podcast Episodes

Josh Seim, "The Welfare Assembly Line: Public Servants in the Suffering City" (U California Press, 2026)

Despite claims that we live in a "post-welfare society," welfare offices remain vital not only for those who depend on them for benefits but also for…

3 days, 17 hours ago

Yishay Ishi Ron, "Dog" (Soncata Press, 2025)

Told through the eyes of an Israeli combat officer who’s haunted by the trauma of fighting in Gaza, Dog (Soncata Press 2025) is a gritty story about…

3 days, 17 hours ago

Stephen Stacks, "The Resounding Revolution: Freedom Song After 1968" (U Illinois Press, 2025)

What happened to freedom singing after Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination? Stephen Stacks considers this question in The Resounding Revolution: …

3 days, 17 hours ago

Hanna Pickard, "What Would You Do Alone in a Cage with Nothing But Cocaine?: A Philosophy of Addiction" (Princeton UP, 2026)

Dr. Hanna Pickard has written a revolutionary new paradigm for understanding addiction. 

Why do people with addiction use drugs self-destructively? W…

3 days, 17 hours ago

Michèle Schaal, "Grrrl Writing: Virginie Despentes's Authorial Politics" (Peter Lang, 2026)

When Virginie Despentes (1969) published her provocative debut novel Baise-moi in 1994, no one could have anticipated how she would gradually become …

3 days, 17 hours ago

Gabriel Tallent, "Crux" (Riverhead Books, 2025)

In Crux (Riverhead Books, 2025), Dan and Tamma are two teenagers in their last year of high school in the southern Mojave Desert. One is a gifted…

3 days, 17 hours ago

Robert Endres, "The Unreasonable Likelihood of Being: Origin of Life, Terraforming, and AI" (arXiv, 2025)

In this episode we discuss the paper "The Unreasonable Likelihood of Being: Origin of Life, Terraforming, and AI" (arXiv, 2025) with Robert Endres.

P…

3 days, 17 hours ago

Paolo Zannoni, "Money and Promises: Seven Deals That Changed the World" (Columbia Business School, 2024)

In Money and Promises: Seven Deals That Changed the World, the distinguished banker, executive, and historian Paolo Zannoni examines the complex r…

3 days, 17 hours ago

Andrea Mansker, "Matchmaking and the Marriage Market in Postrevolutionary France" (Cornell UP, 2024)

Matchmaking and the Marriage Market in Postrevolutionary France (Cornell UP, 2024) gives an historical account of the evolution of the matchmaking b…

3 days, 17 hours ago

Subodhana Wijeyeratne, "The Islands and the Stars: A History of Japan's Space Programs" (Stanford UP, 2026)

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is among the six largest national space agencies in the world, along with China's CNSA, US's NASA, and …

4 days, 17 hours ago