Best About Postwar Podcasts (2025)

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Gavin Williams, "Format Friction: Perspectives on the Shellac Disc" (U Chicago Press, 2024) 1:09:47

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4h ago1:09:47

1:09:47

With the rise of the gramophone around 1900, the shellac disc traveled the world and eventually became the dominant sound format in the first half of the twentieth century. Format Friction brings together a set of local encounters with the shellac disc, beginning with its preconditions in South Asian knowledge and labor, to offer a global portrait …

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Suruchi Mazumdar, "Divided Media: Politics and Mediated Movements in India" (Routledge, 2025) 1:12:48

1h ago1:12:48

1:12:48

Suruchi Mazumdar’s book addresses the complex relationship between India’s evolving, emerging media landscape, the political and economic interests of diverse media actors, and movements opposing contentious issues such as market-based economic reforms and religious nationalism. In the mid-2000s, Singur and Nandigram, nondescript semi-urban and rur…

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Anthony Michael Petro, "Provoking Religion: Sex, Art, and the Culture Wars" (Oxford UP, 2025) 1:19:52

22m ago1:19:52

1:19:52

In the late twentieth century, artists were on the front lines of the culture wars. Leaders of the Christian Right in the U.S. made a national spectacle out of feminist and queer art, blasting it as sacrilegious or pornographic--and sometimes both. On the bully pulpits of television and talk radio, as well as in the halls of Congress, conservatives…

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Anthony Michael Petro, "Provoking Religion: Sex, Art, and the Culture Wars" (Oxford UP, 2025) 1:19:52

2h ago1:19:52

1:19:52

In the late twentieth century, artists were on the front lines of the culture wars. Leaders of the Christian Right in the U.S. made a national spectacle out of feminist and queer art, blasting it as sacrilegious or pornographic--and sometimes both. On the bully pulpits of television and talk radio, as well as in the halls of Congress, conservatives…

1
Gavin Williams, "Format Friction: Perspectives on the Shellac Disc" (U Chicago Press, 2024) 1:09:47

11m ago1:09:47

1:09:47

With the rise of the gramophone around 1900, the shellac disc traveled the world and eventually became the dominant sound format in the first half of the twentieth century. Format Friction brings together a set of local encounters with the shellac disc, beginning with its preconditions in South Asian knowledge and labor, to offer a global portrait …

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Nature, gender and discomfort with 'woke' language 33:31

8h ago33:31

33:31

When someone complains about feeling pressure to use 'woke' language, their discomfort is that of a stranger in an unfamiliar world. For people in marginalised communities, travelling between 'worlds' is an everyday experience, albeit not always a voluntary or a safe one. This week we're talking about the language of trans identity, the category of…

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Nation In Arms: Lessons from Five Armies That Made Europe 37:58

4h ago37:58

37:58

What can the Roman legions of Constantine, the Ottoman forces of Mehmet the Conqueror, and the US Army of World War II teach us about modern military power? In this timely episode of the Explaining History Podcast, I speak with former senior British officer and acclaimed military historian Barney White-Spunner about his forthcoming book Nation In A…

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Aatish Taseer, "A Return to Self: Excursions in Exile" (Catapult, 2025) 48:06

5h ago48:06

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In 2019, famed journalist and writer Aatish Taseer was thrown out of India. Soon after he wrote a cover article for Time calling Prime Minister Narendra Modi the country’s “divider in chief,” New Delhi decided to revoke his residency. That sent Aatish on a journey across the world–to places like Turkey, Spain, Mexico and Sri Lanka–to explore identi…

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Jennifer Bess, "Where the Red-Winged Blackbirds Sing: The Akimel O'odham and Cycles of Agricultural Transformation in the Phoenix Basin" (U Colorado Press, 2021) 1:00:22

6h ago1:00:22

1:00:22

Where the Red-Winged Blackbirds Sing: The Akimel O'odham and Cycles of Agricultural Transformation in the Phoenix Basin (UP of Colorado, 2021) is not a simple story of environmental decline and colonial imposion. In this brilliantly interdisciplinary book, Goucher College peace studies professor Jennifer Bess instead weaves a complicated narrative …

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Episode 723: WEDNESDAY'S EVEN WORSE #715, JULY 30, 2025 59:01

1d ago59:01

59:01

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Episode 722: ACOUSTIC BLUES CLUB, #650 JULY 30, 2025. 58:59

1d ago58:59

58:59

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Arianne Edmonds, "We Now Belong to Ourselves: J. L. Edmonds, the Black Press, and Black Citizenship in America" (Oxford UP, 2025) 49:46

1d ago49:46

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At the turn of the twentieth century, the Black press provided a blueprint to help Black Americans transition from slavery and find opportunities to advance and define African American citizenship. Among the vanguard of the Black press was Jefferson Lewis Edmonds, founder and editor of The Liberator newspaper. His Los Angeles-based newspaper champi…

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Arianne Edmonds, "We Now Belong to Ourselves: J. L. Edmonds, the Black Press, and Black Citizenship in America" (Oxford UP, 2025) 49:46

1d ago49:46

49:46

At the turn of the twentieth century, the Black press provided a blueprint to help Black Americans transition from slavery and find opportunities to advance and define African American citizenship. Among the vanguard of the Black press was Jefferson Lewis Edmonds, founder and editor of The Liberator newspaper. His Los Angeles-based newspaper champi…

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Daniel Morales, "Between Here and There: The Political Economy of Transnational Mexican Migration, 1900-1942" (Oxford UP, 2024) 1:02:46

1d ago1:02:46

1:02:46

Between Here and There is the first history of the creation of modern US-Mexico migration patterns narrated from multiple geographic and institutional sites. This book analyzes the interplay between the US and Mexican governments, civic organizations, and migrants on both sides of the border and offers a revisionist and comprehensive view of Mexica…

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Thomas M. Kemple, "Marx's Wager: Das Kapital and Classical Sociology" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2022) 1:12:00

1d ago1:12:00

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Marx’s Capital looms large today, a century and a half after first publication, a massive tome that attempts to document and map out the dynamics of a society consumed by capital accumulation. The complexity and scope, as well as its voluminous incompleteness upon his death, have left many readers perplexed, looking for a ‘royal road’ to comprehens…

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Gavin Sutherland on Goon Show Music 1:30:55

1d ago1:30:55

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This week Goon Pod welcomes Gavin Sutherland, conductor, musician, composer, arranger and general music nut with a passion for both the high-brow and the not-so-high-brow. As well as all that he's involved in podcasts such as The Peggy Mount Calamity Hour and has just released an album of old TV tunes, idents and ephemera: 'The Next Programme Follo…

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Sarah Teasley, "Designing Modern Japan" (Reaktion Books, 2022) 1:45:12

4d ago1:45:12

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Sarah Teasley's Designing Modern Japan (Reaktion, 2022) unpicks the history of Japanese design from the mid-nineteenth century to the end of the twentieth, focusing on continuities and disruptions within communities and practices of design. Designing Modern Japan explores design in the unfolding contexts of modernization, empire and war, defeat and…

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Ünver Rüstem, "Ottoman Baroque: The Architectural Refashioning of Eighteenth-Century Istanbul" (Princeton UP, 2019) 1:14:03

4d ago1:14:03

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In Istanbul, there is a mosque on every hill. Cruising along the Bosphorus, either for pleasure, or like the majority of Istanbul’s denizens, for transit, you cannot help but notice that the city’s landscape would be dramatically altered without the mosques of the city. In Ottoman Baroque: The Architectural Refashioning of Eighteenth-Century Istanb…

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Sarah Teasley, "Designing Modern Japan" (Reaktion Books, 2022) 1:45:12

4d ago1:45:12

1:45:12

Sarah Teasley's Designing Modern Japan (Reaktion, 2022) unpicks the history of Japanese design from the mid-nineteenth century to the end of the twentieth, focusing on continuities and disruptions within communities and practices of design. Designing Modern Japan explores design in the unfolding contexts of modernization, empire and war, defeat and…

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Nadya Bair, "The Decisive Network: Magnum Photos and the Postwar Image Market" (U California Press, 2020) 40:05

5d ago40:05

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The legendary Magnum photo agency has long been associated with heroic lone wolf male photographers such as Robert Capa and Henri Cartier-Bresson, roaming the world in search of the “decisive moment” – the perfect shot that captured the essence of a major news story. Nadya Bair’s highly original book The Decisive Network: Magnum Photos and the Post…

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Nadya Bair, "The Decisive Network: Magnum Photos and the Postwar Image Market" (U California Press, 2020) 40:05

5d ago40:05

40:05

The legendary Magnum photo agency has long been associated with heroic lone wolf male photographers such as Robert Capa and Henri Cartier-Bresson, roaming the world in search of the “decisive moment” – the perfect shot that captured the essence of a major news story. Nadya Bair’s highly original book The Decisive Network: Magnum Photos and the Post…

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Christopher Marquis and Kunyuan Qiao, "Mao and Markets: The Communist Roots of Chinese Enterprise" (Yale UP, 2022) 49:21

5d ago49:21

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Mao and Markets: The Communist Roots of Chinese Enterprise (Yale University Press, 2022) by Dr. Christopher Marquis & Dr. Kunyuan Qiao presents a thoroughly researched assessment of how China’s economic success continues to be shaped by the communist ideology of Chairman Mao It was long assumed that as China embraced open markets and private enterp…

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Nadya Bair, "The Decisive Network: Magnum Photos and the Postwar Image Market" (U California Press, 2020) 40:05

5d ago40:05

40:05

The legendary Magnum photo agency has long been associated with heroic lone wolf male photographers such as Robert Capa and Henri Cartier-Bresson, roaming the world in search of the “decisive moment” – the perfect shot that captured the essence of a major news story. Nadya Bair’s highly original book The Decisive Network: Magnum Photos and the Post…

1
Nadya Bair, "The Decisive Network: Magnum Photos and the Postwar Image Market" (U California Press, 2020) 40:05

5d ago40:05

40:05

The legendary Magnum photo agency has long been associated with heroic lone wolf male photographers such as Robert Capa and Henri Cartier-Bresson, roaming the world in search of the “decisive moment” – the perfect shot that captured the essence of a major news story. Nadya Bair’s highly original book The Decisive Network: Magnum Photos and the Post…

1
Nadya Bair, "The Decisive Network: Magnum Photos and the Postwar Image Market" (U California Press, 2020) 40:05

5d ago40:05

40:05

The legendary Magnum photo agency has long been associated with heroic lone wolf male photographers such as Robert Capa and Henri Cartier-Bresson, roaming the world in search of the “decisive moment” – the perfect shot that captured the essence of a major news story. Nadya Bair’s highly original book The Decisive Network: Magnum Photos and the Post…

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Anglo American rivalries in the Middle East 28:51

6d ago28:51

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At the heart of Britain's war time alliance was a deep wariness at what the outcome of the war would portend. Churchill was desperate for the USA to enter the war and Roosevelt saw the struggle against fascism as vital to America's security, but the US president like Wilson before him imagined a world without European empires. In this episode we ex…

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Paul A. Thomas, "Inside Wikipedia: How It Works and How You Can Be an Editor" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022) 56:42

6d ago56:42

56:42

In this book, Paul A. Thomas—a seasoned Wikipedia contributor who has accrued about 60,000 edits since he started editing in 2007—breaks down the history of the free encyclopedia and explains the process of becoming an editor. Now a newly minted Ph.D. and a library specialist at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, he outlines the many roles a Wik…

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Agathe Demarais, "Backfire: How Sanctions Reshape the World Against U.S. Interests" (Columbia UP, 2022) 1:07:28

6d ago1:07:28

1:07:28

Sanctions have become the go-to foreign policy tool for the United States. Coercive economic measures such as trade tariffs, financial penalties, and export controls affect large numbers of companies and states across the globe. Some of these penalties target nonstate actors, such as Colombian drug cartels and Islamist terror groups; others apply t…

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What's the time? Indigenous temporalities and the 'Everywhen' 29:30

7d ago29:30

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We tend to think of time as a universal experience, something that carries us all along in the same direction at the same pace. So it might seem strange to think of time in terms of 'temporalities', different concepts and experiences of time that reflect different cultural values. In Australia, Indigenous temporalities are deeply interwoven with no…

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Emeline Salama-Caro on Expanding the Legacy of Robert Indiana 31:36

7d ago31:36

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In this week's episode of the ArtTactic Podcast, host Adam Green speaks with Emeline Salama-Caro, director of the Robert Indiana Legacy Initiative. Founded in 2022 by her family following the artist’s passing, the Initiative is dedicated to expanding awareness of Robert Indiana’s work beyond his iconic LOVE sculpture. Emeline discusses the unique s…

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Economic Sanctions: Crimes against humanity. 26:18

7d ago26:18

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In this episode, we tear away the euphemisms and expose a grim reality: sanctions kill. Drawing on a 2025 study from The Lancet Global Health, we show how economic sanctions imposed by the U.S. and other powers are responsible for up to 777,000 deaths each year, with children and the elderly most at risk. We trace the history of sanctions from the …

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Zachari Logan, "Green" (Radiant Press, 2025). 54:19

7d ago54:19

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In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with poet and visual artist Zachary Logan about his beautiful collection of poetry and art, Green (Radiant Press, 2025). An exciting new collection of ekphrastic poems accompanied by a compilation of green sketches via the lens of a queer poet and visual artist. Zachari Logan carried a sketchbook as h…

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Ford to City: Drop Dead 57:42

7d ago57:42

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On October 30, 1975, the New York Daily News printed the most famous headline in its history: “Ford to City: Drop Dead.” The previous day, President Gerald Ford had delivered a speech at the National Press Club in Washington on the looming bankruptcy of New York City. In the speech, Ford publicly denied the near-bankrupt New York City a federal bai…

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Episode 721: WEDNESDAY'S EVEN WORSE #732, JULY 23, 2025 59:00

8d ago59:00

59:00

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Episode 720: ACOUSTIC BLUES CLUB, #649 JULY 23, 2025 58:00

8d ago58:00

58:00

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John Nikas: Racing, Writing and Rants 1:53:20

8d ago1:53:20

1:53:20

Few people speak more passionately about cars than John Nikas. He's a longtime vintage racing driver, an author of dozens of books, and a sought-after public speaker on automotive subjects. His first love was for British sports cars in all their crudeness and stubborn tradition, but that was only the gateway to a lifetime spent behind the wheel and…

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Brian Fauteux, "Music in Orbit: Satellite Radio in the Streaming Space Age" (Univ of California Press, 2025) 1:18:36

8d ago1:18:36

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Years before the advent of music streaming, Sirius and XM established satellite radio services that attracted paying subscribers through their ever-expanding lineup of niche music channels and exclusive celebrity-hosted programming. Brian Fauteux's Music in Orbit: Satellite Radio in the Streaming Space Age (University of California Press, 2025) is …

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Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna, "The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want" (Harper, 2025) 1:05:13

8d ago1:05:13

1:05:13

Is artificial intelligence going to take over the world? Have big tech scientists created an artificial lifeform that can think on its own? Is it going to put authors, artists, and others out of business? Are we about to enter an age where computers are better than humans at everything? Linguist Emily M. Bender and sociologist Alex Hanna make clear…

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Cameron Kunzelman, "The World is Born from Zero: Understanding Speculation and Video Games" (de Gruyter, 2022) 38:34

8d ago38:34

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The World is Born From Zero is an investigation into the relationship between video games and science fiction through the philosophy of speculation. Cameron Kunzelman (Mercer University, Macon, Georgia, USA) argues that the video game medium is centered on the evaluation and production of possible futures by following video game studies, media phil…

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Alice In Wonderland (1966) - with Bob Fischer 1:34:25

8d ago1:34:25

1:34:25

In 1966 Jonathan Miller's BBC Television adaptation of Lewis Carroll's classic children's story caused something of a moral panic, even before it was broadcast. Amidst much foot-stamping, harrumphing and letters to the Editor the point was very much missed - yes, it was to be screened after nine o'clock in the evening and was not aimed at children …

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From Powell Memo to Policy Powerhouse: How Right-Wing Think Tanks Hijacked America’s Future since 1973 26:08

10d ago26:08

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How did neoliberalism go from fringe idea to ruling ideology in the United States? In this deep-dive episode of Explaining History, we trace the hidden rise of America’s most influential right-wing think tanks—Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute, Manhattan Institute and more—from their birth in the 1970s oil-crisis chaos to their role in dismantlin…

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Richard Scheib, "A Viewing Guide to the Pandemic: Depictions of Plague and Pandemic on Film and TV" (Headpress, 2025) 36:23

11d ago36:23

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Richard Scheib's A Viewing Guide to the Pandemic (Headpress, 2025) is a film book like no other. It opens with the author's first-hand account of the Covid-19 pandemic and life in lockdown. His sense of dread, and anxiety about his state of health, were experiences shared with millions of others across the world. For author Richard Scheib, already …

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Kelefa Sanneh, "Major Labels: A History of Popular Music in Seven Genres" (Penguin, 2021) 1:03:03

11d ago1:03:03

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Kelefa Sanneh was born in England, and lived in Ghana and Scotland before moving with his parents to the United States in the early 1980s. He was a pop music critic at the New York Times from 2000-2008, and has been a staff writer at the New Yorker since then. His first book, just released on Penguin, is called Major Labels: A History of Popular Mu…

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Michael John Witgen, "Seeing Red: Indigenous Land, American Expansion, and the Political Economy of Plunder in North America" (UNC Press, 2021) 59:32

11d ago59:32

59:32

Against long odds, the Anishinaabeg resisted removal, retaining much of their land in the Old Northwest—what’s now Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. Their success rested partly on their roles as sellers of natural resources and buyers of trade goods, which made them key players in the political economy of plunder that drove white settlement and U…

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How ClioVis is Transforming Education and Historical Research 22:14

12d ago22:14

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Today I’m speaking with Marcus Golding, historian and Director of Educational Operations at ClioVis. ClioVis is an incredible software and learning tool that allows educators and studies to create digital timelines, network visualizations, and interactive presentations. Founded by UT Austin history professor Erika Bsumek, ClioVis is made for profes…