Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchLaura Spinney, "Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
Episode 124
Star. Stjarna. Setareh. Thousands of miles apart, humans look up at the night sky and use the same word to describe what they see. Listen to these En…
1 year, 6 months ago
Lorna Gibb, "Rare Tongues: The Secret Stories of Hidden Languages" (Princeton UP, 2025)
Episode 119
An enthralling tour of the world’s rarest and most endangered languages Languages and cultures are becoming increasingly homogenous, with the resulti…
1 year, 6 months ago
William Kiser, "The Business of Killing Indians: Scalp Warfare and the Violent Conquest of North America" (Yale UP, 2025)
Episode 184
In Cormac McCarthy's 1985 Western, Blood Meridian, the story follows infamous scalp hunter John Joel Glanton through the Mexican borderlands in the m…
1 year, 6 months ago
Steven Hahn, "Illiberal America: A History" (Norton, 2024)
Episode 526
If your reaction to the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol was to think, 'That’s not us,' think again. In Illiberal America: A History (Nor…
1 year, 6 months ago
Adam Kissel et al., "Slacking: A Guide to Ivy League Miseducation" (Encounter Books, 2025)
Episode 147
What does a general education from an Ivy League mean? What structures produce the course catalogues that students can choose to customize their educ…
1 year, 6 months ago
Peter B. Kaufman, "The Moving Image: A User's Manual" (MIT Press, 2025)
Episode 231
Video (television, film, the moving image generally) is today’s most popular information medium. Two-thirds of the world’s internet traffic is video.…
1 year, 6 months ago
Saleem H. Ali, "Sustainability: A Very Short Introduction" (Oxford UP, 2024)
Episode 29
The growing concern about global environmental change and human impacts on the planet has led to the emergence of a broad field of study on the 'sust…
1 year, 6 months ago
Jonathan D. Cohen, "Losing Big: America's Dangerous Sports Gambling Boom" (Columbia Global Reports, 2025)
Episode 289
In 2018, the United States Supreme Court opened the floodgates for states to legalize betting on sports. Eager for revenue, almost forty states have …
1 year, 6 months ago
Jennifer Clapp, "Titans of Industrial Agriculture: How a Few Giant Corporations Came to Dominate the Farm Sector and Why It Matters" (MIT Press, 2025)
Episode 128
Every year, hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of farm machinery, fertilizer, seeds, and pesticides are sold to farmers around the world. Althoug…
1 year, 6 months ago
Chitra Nagarajan, "The World Was in Our Hands: Voices from the Boko Haram Conflict" (Cassava Republic, 2025)
Episode 211
The World Was in Our Hands: Voices from the Boko Haram Conflict (Cassava Republic Press, 2025) is a moving, often provocative, and ultimately vital c…
1 year, 6 months ago