Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchDavid King Dunaway, "A Four-Eyed World: How Glasses Changed the Way We See" (Bloomsbury, 2026)
Eyeglasses have become so commonplace we hardly think about them—unless we can’t find them. Yet glasses have been controversial throughout history. R…
1 week, 1 day ago
David Frankfurter ed., "Guide to the Study of Ancient Magic" (Brill, 2019)
In the midst of academic debates about the utility of the term “magic” and the cultural meaning of ancient words like mageia or khesheph, this Guide …
1 week, 1 day ago
Thomas Zeitzoff, "No Option But Sabotage: The Radical Environmental Movement and the Climate Crisis" (Oxford UP, 2026)
An authoritative history of the radical environmental movement in the United States, No Option But Sabotage explores how far activists are willing to…
1 week, 1 day ago
The American Mirage: How Reality TV Upholds the Myth of Meritocracy
In an age of growing wealth disparities, politicians on both sides of the aisle are sounding the alarm about the fading American Dream. Yet despite a…
1 week, 1 day ago
Helen Garner Hacking Away at the Adverbs: A Novel Dialogue Crossover Conversation
In this RTB and Novel Dialogue episode from 2021, Helen Garner sits down with John and Elizabeth McMahon, a distinguished scholar of Australian liter…
1 week, 1 day ago
Joanna Lillis, "Silk Mirage: Through the Looking Glass in Uzbekistan" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
In September 2016, Islam Karimov–the first president of a post-Soviet Uzbekistan–died, at age 78. His death ended an oppressive dictatorship that had…
1 week, 1 day ago
Denys Gorbach, "The Making and Unmaking of the Ukrainian Working Class: Everyday Politics and Moral Economy in a Post-Soviet City" (Berghahn Books, 2024)
Industrial workers in Ukraine have a complex political lifeworld because their political action aimed at bringing radical social change coexists with…
1 week, 1 day ago
W. Patrick McCray, "README: A Bookish History of Computing from Electronic Brains to Everything Machines" (MIT Press, 2025)
In README: A Bookish History of Computing from Electronic Brains to Everything Machines (MIT Press, 2025), historian Dr. Patrick McCray argues that i…
1 week, 1 day ago
Kristine A. Lombardi, "Crouton: One Cat's Adoption Tale" (Random House, 2026)
Today we host the wonderfully talented award-winning author-illustrator Kristine A. Lombardi and celebrate her enchanting and funny brand new book, C…
1 week, 2 days ago
Emily Dufton, "Addiction, Inc: Medication-assisted Treatment and America's Forgotten War on Drugs" (U Chicago Press, 2026)
How the war on drugs created the gold standard treatment for addiction--until America's opioid crisis got privatized for profit, to the detriment of …
1 week, 2 days ago