Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchMark Neocleous, "Pacification: Social War and the Power of Police" (Verso, 2025)
Episode 125
Today I talked to Mark Neocleous about his new book Pacification: Social War and the Power of Police (Verso, 2025).
For more than two decades, Neocleo…
1 year, 7 months ago
Lydia Pelot-Hobbs, "Prison Capital: Mass Incarceration and Struggles for Abolition Democracy in Louisiana" (UNC Press, 2023)
Episode 25
Every year between 1998 to 2020 except one, Louisiana had the highest per capita rate of incarceration in the nation and thus the world. Prison Capit…
1 year, 7 months ago
Selena Wisnom, "The Library of Ancient Wisdom: Mesopotamia and the Making of the Modern World" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
Episode 43
When a team of Victorian archaeologists dug into a grassy hill in Iraq, they chanced upon one of the oldest and greatest stores of knowledge ever see…
1 year, 7 months ago
Adrian Keith Perkel, "Unlocking the Nature of Human Aggression: A Psychoanalytic and Neuroscientific Approach" (Routledge, 2023)
Episode 262
Today I began my discussion with Dr. Adrian Perkel about his new book Unlocking The Nature of Human Aggression: A Psychoanalytic and Neuroscientific …
1 year, 7 months ago
Martha Bayless, "Entertainment, Pleasure, and Meaning in Early England" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
Episode 93
The people of early England (c. 450–1100 CE) enjoyed numerous kinds of entertainment, recreation and pleasure, but the scattered records of such thin…
1 year, 7 months ago
M. Chirimuuta, "The Brain Abstracted: Simplification in the History and Philosophy of Neuroscience" (MIT Press, 2024)
Episode 367
This book is available open access here.
The Brain Abstracted: Simplification in the History and Philosophy of Neuroscience (MIT Press, 2024), Mazvii…
1 year, 7 months ago
Abby Innes, "Late Soviet Britain: Why Materialist Utopias Fail" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
Episode 515
Why has the United Kingdom, historically one of the strongest democracies in the world, become so unstable? What changed? Late Soviet Britain: Why Ma…
1 year, 7 months ago
Kimberly Clausing, "Open: The Progressive Case for Free Trade, Immigration, and Global Capital" (Harvard UP, 2019)
Episode 170
Critics on the Left have long attacked open markets and free trade agreements for exploiting the poor and undermining labor, while those on the Right…
1 year, 7 months ago
Gary Griggs, "California Catastrophes: The Natural Disaster History of the Golden State" (U California Press, 2024)
Episode 181
California has more natural hazards per square mile than any other state, but this hasn’t deterred people from moving here. Entire California towns a…
1 year, 7 months ago
Manu Pillai, "Gods, Guns and Missionaries: The Making of the Modern Hindu Identity" (Allen Lane, 2025)
Episode 228
What is Hinduism?
For centuries, that question was particularly thorny, both for local Indians and for colonial outsiders. People inside and outside t…
1 year, 7 months ago