Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchBrian Villmoare, "The Evolution of Everything: The Patterns and Causes of Big History" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
Episode 2
Big History seeks to retell the human story in light of scientific advances by such methods as radiocarbon dating and genetic analysis. Brian Villmoa…
3 years, 2 months ago
Alexa Hagerty, "Still Life with Bones: Genocide, Forensics, and What Remains" (Crown, 2023)
Episode 182
In Still Life with Bones: Genocide, Forensics, and What Remains (Crown, 2023), anthropologist Alexa Hagerty learns to see the dead body with a forens…
3 years, 2 months ago
Eli Elinoff, "Citizen Designs: City-Making and Democracy in Northeastern Thailand" (U Hawaii Press, 2021)
Episode 10
What does it mean to design democratic cities and democratic citizens in a time of mass urbanization and volatile political transformation?
Citizen D…
3 years, 2 months ago
Ioannis Gaitanidis, "Spirituality and Alternativity in Contemporary Japan: Beyond Religion?" (Bloomsbury, 2022)
Episode 118
Ioannis Gaitanidis' book Spirituality and Alternativity in Contemporary Japan: Beyond Religion? (Bloomsbury, 2022) critically examines the spirituali…
3 years, 2 months ago
The Good Enough Life
Episode 134
Today’s book is: The Good-Enough Life (Princeton UP, 2022) by Avram Alpert. We live in a world oriented toward greatness, one in which we feel compel…
3 years, 2 months ago
Laurah E. Klepinger, "Transnational Yoga at Work: Spiritual Tourism and Its Blind Spots" (Lexington Books, 2022)
Episode 252
Transnational Yoga at Work: Spiritual Tourism and Its Blind Spots (Lexington Books, 2022) is an ethnography about local wageworkers in the Indian bra…
3 years, 2 months ago
Antonius C. G. M. Robben and Alex Hinton, "Perpetrators: Encountering Humanity's Dark Side" (Stanford UP, 2023)
Episode 181
Perpetrators of mass violence are commonly regarded as evil. Their violent nature is believed to make them commit heinous crimes as members of state …
3 years, 2 months ago
Jeffrey G. Snodgrass, "The Avatar Faculty: Ecstatic Transformations in Religion and Video Games" (U California Press, 2023)
Episode 219
The Avatar Faculty: Ecstatic Transformations in Religion and Video Games (University of California Press, 2023) creatively examines the parallels bet…
3 years, 2 months ago
Heidi J. Larson, "Stuck: How Vaccine Rumors Start--and Why They Don't Go Away" (Oxford UP, 2020)
Episode 3
Vaccine reluctance and refusal are no longer limited to the margins of society. Debates around vaccines' necessity -- along with questions around the…
3 years, 2 months ago
Elizabeth Bronwyn Boyd, "Southern Beauty: Race, Ritual, and Memory in the Modern South" (U Georgia Press, 2022)
Episode 50
Elizabeth Bronwyn Boyd's book Southern Beauty: Race, Ritual, and Memory in the Modern South (U Georgia Press, 2022) explains a curiosity: why a femin…
3 years, 2 months ago