Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchKhiara Bridges, "Expecting Inequity: How the Maternal Health Crisis Affects Even the Wealthiest Black Americans" (MIT Press, 2026)
Episode 1877
An unsettling exploration of the persistence of racism in reproductive healthcare in the US—and why even affluent Black women are imperiled by substa…
3 months, 2 weeks ago
Hector Amaya, "The Economy of Anonymity: Power in the Age of Identification" (Stanford UP 2026)
Episode 1876
We use avatars to play video games. We use pseudonyms on social media. We use VPNs to mask our identities and activities. In the digital realm, ano…
3 months, 2 weeks ago
Rory Cormac, "Fakers: A Top-Secret Tale of Phantoms and Forgeries on the Disinformation Front Line" (Oxford UP, 2026)
Episode 1875
Fakers: A Top-Secret Tale of Phantoms and Forgeries on the Disinformation Front Line (Oxford UP, 2026) reveals the rise and fall of the mavericks run…
3 months, 3 weeks ago
Christopher M. Federico et al., "The Authoritarian Divide: Partisan Identity, Voting, and the Transformation of the American Electorate" (Oxford UP, 2026)
Episode 1874
Political Scientists Christopher Federico, Stanley Feldman, and Christopher Weber have an important and fascinating new book from Oxford University P…
3 months, 3 weeks ago
Gayle F. Wald, "This Is Rhythm: Ella Jenkins, Children’s Music, and the Long Civil Rights Movement" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
Episode 1873
Ella Jenkins (1924–2024) was one of the most influential musicians of the twentieth century, although many people have never heard of her. A pionee…
3 months, 3 weeks ago
Soraya Murray, "Technothriller: Film and the American Imagination" (MIT Press, 2026)
Episode 1872
Technothriller: Film and the American Imagination (MIT Press, 2026) is the first dedicated examination of popular movies classified as “thrillers” …
3 months, 3 weeks ago
Rod Phillips, "Cats: A History" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2026)
Episode 1871
For more than 10,000 years, cats have prowled at the edges of human life. But, starting only a few decades ago, hundreds of millions of them becam…
3 months, 3 weeks ago
Diana Cucuz, "Winning Women’s Hearts and Minds: Selling Cold War Culture in the US and the USSR" (U Toronto Press, 2023)
Episode 1870
In this episode, Alisa interviews Dr. Diana Cucuz about her book, Winning Women’s Hearts and Minds: Selling Cold War Culture in the US and the USSR (…
3 months, 3 weeks ago
Cécile Bishop, "Forms of Blackness: Race and Visibility in the French-Speaking World" (Duke UP, 2026)
Episode 1869
What does Blackness look like? In Forms of Blackness: Race and Visibility in the French-Speaking World (Duke University Press, 2026), Cécile Bishop …
3 months, 3 weeks ago
Ali Fard, "Grounding the Cloud: Urbanism in the Shadow of Data" (U Minnesota Press, 2026)
Episode 1868
Since the 1990s, technologists have promoted a vision of the “cloud” as a shapeless and intangible entity. Grounding the Cloud: Urbanism in the Shado…
3 months, 4 weeks ago