Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchChris Boucher, "Harry "Bucky" Lew: A Biography of the First Black Professional Basketball Player" (McFarland, 2026)
Episode 305
Harry "Bucky" Lew leapt over pro basketball's color wall in 1902 and continued to integrate every single role in the game over the next 25 years. He …
1 month, 2 weeks ago
Harold James, "Seven Crashes: The Economic Crises That Shaped Globalization" (Yale UP, 2023)
Episode 69
In Seven Crashes: The Economic Crises That Shaped Globalization (Yale UP, 2023), distinguished economic historian Harold James offers a fresh perspec…
1 month, 2 weeks ago
"Plenty for All: The Art of Rick Fröberg" (Akashic Books, Ltd., 2016)
Rick Fröberg was an accomplished artist and musician born in Southern California who spent most of his early creative years in San Diego before movin…
1 month, 2 weeks ago
Jeffrey Ahlman, "Ghana: A Political and Social History" (Zed Books, 2023)
Episode 185
Over the last two decades, historians have steadily moved away from writing longue durée national histories. Especially in the wake of the global his…
1 month, 2 weeks ago
Bruce Berglund, "The Moscow Playbook: How Russia Used, Abused, and Transformed Sports in the Hunt for Power" (Triumph Books, 2026)
Episode 304
An eye-opening account of how Russia's leaders have used sports as a political tool to solidify their global power
"Victories in sport do more to cem…
1 month, 2 weeks ago
Kendra D. Boyd, "Freedom Enterprise: Black Entrepreneurship and Racial Capitalism in Detroit" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025)
Episode 541
The Great Migration saw more than six million African Americans leave the US South between 1910 and 1970. Though the experiences of migrant laborers …
1 month, 2 weeks ago
Amitav Acharya, "The Once and Future World Order: Why Global Civilization Will Survive the Decline of the West" (Hachette UK, 2025)
Episode 158
Since the dawn of the twenty-first century, the West has been in crisis. Social unrest, political polarization, and the rise of other great powers—es…
1 month, 2 weeks ago
David Broder, "Mussolini's Grandchildren: Fascism in Contemporary Italy" (Pluto Press, 2023)
Episode 16
The fastest-rising force in Italian politics is Giorgia Meloni's Fratelli d'Italia - a party with a direct genealogy from Mussolini's regime. Surging…
1 month, 2 weeks ago
Alison Bashford, "Decoding the Hand: A History of Science, Medicine, and Magic" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
Episode 39
Why did Isaac Newton read books on chiromancy, the occult science of hand reading that revealed the secrets of the soul? Why did Charles Darwin claim…
1 month, 2 weeks ago
Kenneth Aizawa, "Compositional Abduction and Scientific Interpretation: A Granular Approach" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
Episode 379
How do scientists reason when they posit unobservables to explain their observed results? For example, how did Watson and Crick reason that DNA had a…
1 month, 2 weeks ago