Best Discourse Of Human Events Podcasts (2025)

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Aaron Cayer, "Incorporating Architects: How American Architecture Became a Practice of Empire" (U California Press, 2025) 34:35

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4h ago34:35

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By the end of the twentieth century, US architecture and engineering firms held more capital than entire countries, employed more people than were housed in most cities, and rented offices in more nations than comprised the UN. Within them, architects were designing not single buildings but urban systems, including the multinational infrastructures…

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Gen Z Uprising: Youth, Protest and Political Change in Nepal 32:56

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In early September 2025, Nepal witnessed an extraordinary week of upheaval that many now refer to as the ‘five-day revolution’. Within the span of a single week, youth-led ‘Gen Z’ protests spread across Kathmandu and other major cities, the prime minister and his government resigned, the army intervened, parliament was dissolved, and Nepal’s new (a…

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Sahan Jayasuriya, "Don't Say Please: The Oral History of Die Kreuzen" (Feral House, 2025) 1:08:46

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In Don't Say Please: The Oral History of Die Kreuzen (Feral House, 2025), Sahan Jayasuriya brings readers into the world of 1980s hardcore in the Midwest. Amidst this explosion of American punk and experimental music, a band from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, emerged with a groundbreaking sound. Die Kreuzen, a group that defied genre boundaries, fused punk…

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Thea Riofrancos, "Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism" (W.W. Norton, 2025) 1:25:41

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Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism (W.W. Norton, 2025) is an in-depth analysis into the growing industry of green technologies and the environmental, social, and political consequences of the mining it requires. In the fight against climate change, lithium's role in reducing emissions by powering green economies is a mixed blessing. Draw…

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Mary E. Hicks, "Captive Cosmopolitans: Black Mariners and the World of South Atlantic Slavery" (Omohundro Institute and UNC Press, 2025) 1:06:43

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From the bustling ports of Lisbon to the coastal inlets of the Bight of Benin to the vibrant waterways of Bahia, Black mariners were integral to every space of the commercial South Atlantic. Navigating this kaleidoscopic world required a remarkable cosmopolitanism--the chameleonlike ability to adapt to new surroundings by developing sophisticated m…

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Mark A. Schneegurt, "Everyday Holiday: A Jewish Calendar of Events and Observances" (Independently Published, 2024) 52:33

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Because Every Day Is a Special Day on the Jewish Calendar. Giant Jewish Calendar. More than 2400 Jewish events. Holidays - Biblical - History. Hundreds of Rabbinic Yarzheits. Modern Celebrities and Sports Figures. Every Day Is a Special Day to Celebrate. Everyday Holiday: A Jewish Calendar of Events and Observances (Independently Published, 2024) i…

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Elizabeth E. Imber, "Uncertain Empire: Jews, Nationalism, and the Fate of British Imperialism" (Stanford UP, 2025) 1:12:46

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Following the British conquest of Ottoman Palestine, Jews across the British Empire—from Jerusalem to Johannesburg, London to Calcutta—found themselves at the heart of global Jewish political discourse. As these intellectuals, politicians, activists, and communal elites navigated shifting political landscapes, some envisioned Palestine as a British…

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Michael Jabara Carley, "Stalin's Gamble: The Search for Allies Against Hitler, 1930-1936" (U Toronto Press, 2023) 1:25:35

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Shedding light on the origins of the Second World War in Europe, Stalin's Gamble: The Search for Allies Against Hitler, 1930-1936 (University of Toronto Press, 2023) aims to create a historical narrative of the relations of the USSR with Britain, France, the United States, Poland, Germany, Italy, Czechoslovakia, and Romania during the 1930s. The bo…

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John L. Campbell, "Pay Up!: Conservative Myths about Tax Cuts for the Rich" (Cambridge UP, 2025) 34:35

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Since the Reagan era, conservatives in the United States have championed cutting taxes, especially for wealthy individuals and corporations, as the best way to achieve economic prosperity. In his new book, Pay Up!: Conservative Myths about Tax Cuts for the Rich (Cambridge UP, 2025) John L. Campbell shows that while these claims are highly influenti…

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Natacha Chetcuti-Osorovitz and Sara Garbagnoli "La Pensée Wittig: Une Introduction" (Payot, 2025) 43:23

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How is it possible to be a subject when faced with oppression? The revolutionary thought and work of French novelist and lesbian thinker Monique Wittig are today in dialogue with feminist and LGBTQIA+ analyses and politics. Her materialist theorization of lesbianism subfuses contemporary feminism and queer political and social movements. By proposi…

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Kenneth R. Valpey, "Yoga and Animal Ethics" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025) 43:42

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This open access book, Yoga and Animal Ethics (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025) offers a comprehensive understanding of yoga theory and practice as it bears on several dimensions of animal-related ethical reflection and action. "Yoga" has become a household word in recent decades and, increasingly, has drawn physical yoga practitioners to explore its phil…

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Robert Waxler and David Beckman, "You Say, I Say: Staying Alive with Literature, Language, and Friendship" (Rivertown Books, 2025) 49:53

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In a world increasingly dominated by visual and electronic noise, Robert Waxler and David Beckman's You Say, I Say: Staying Alive with Literature, Language, and Friendship (Rivertown Books, 2025) captures the enduring power of literature-not to resolve the great questions of human existence, but to help us explore those questions in ways that are e…

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Rosinka Chaudhuri, "India's First Radicals: Young Bengal and the British Empire" (India Viking, 2025) 52:09

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In 1831, the India Gazette wrote about a group of radical young thinkers that it credited for an upheaval in social and religious politics in Calcutta. These were the Young Bengal, the proteges of Henry Derozio of Hindu College. These thinkers, according to Rosinka Chaudhuri, were India’s first radicals, trying to reshape Indian politics as it came…

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Debra Michals, "She's the Boss: The Rise of Women’s Entrepreneurship since World War II" (Rutgers UP, 2025) 43:55

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In the years after World War II, as women were being pushed from wartime jobs for returning soldiers, government and business leaders—and women themselves—saw small business ownership as a viable economic solution. In just five years, US women owned nearly a million of the nation’s businesses. In the decades since, women have moved increasingly int…

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Fiona J. Mackenzie, "The Cadence of a Song: The Life of Margaret Fay Shaw" (Birlinn, 2025) 46:08

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The American-born folklorist and musician Margaret Fay Shaw’s passion for the Hebrides led her to the island of South Uist in 1929 and then to Canna in 1935 as the wife of the eminent folklorist John Lorne Campbell. Her extraordinary work in documenting and preserving traditional Gaelic songs and customs remains a vital resource for understanding H…

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Julia Rensing, "Troubling Archives: History and Memory in Namibian Literature and Art" (Transcript Publishing, 2025) 46:14

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Namibia’s colonial history casts a long shadow over the country’s present. Contemporary authors and artists confront the legacies of German and South African colonial rule and engage creatively with the persistent remnants of the past. In their works, the archive remains both an invaluable and fraught resource for accessing obscured histories. In T…

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Paris Papamichos Chronakis, "The Business of Transition: Jewish and Greek Merchants of Salonica from Ottoman to Greek Rule" (Stanford UP, 2024) 1:11:50

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The Business of Transition: Jewish and Greek Merchants of Salonica from Ottoman to Greek Rule (Stanford UP, 2024) examines how the cosmopolitan bourgeoisie of the Eastern Mediterranean navigated the transition from empire to nation-state in the early twentieth century. In this social and cultural history, Paris Papamichos Chronakis shows how the Je…

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Jonn Elledge, "A Brief History of the World in 47 Borders: Surprising Stories Behind the Lines on Our Maps" (Experiment, 2024) 56:57

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In this eye-opening investigation into the most remarkable points on the map, a single boundary might, upon closer inspection, reveal eons of history—from epic tales of conquest, treaties, and alliances to intimate, all-too-human stories of love, greed, and folly. Sometimes rooted in physical geography, sometimes entirely arbitrary, none of the lin…

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J. Doyne Farmer, "Making Sense of Chaos" (Yale UP, 2024) 59:09

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We live in an age of increasing complexity--an era of accelerating technology and global interconnection that holds more promise, and more peril, than any other time in human history. The fossil fuels that have powered global wealth creation now threaten to destroy the world they helped build. Automation and digitization promise prosperity for some…

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Ecodefense: Dave Foreman and Earth First!’s Deep Ecology 59:58

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A cowboy hat-wearing Goldwater conservative named Dave Foreman got religion and then founded the most radical environmental group of recent memory, Earth First! They dreamed of a ‘deep ecology’ that recognized the inherent value of nature, and they committed to protecting that nature at almost any cost. Yet, in putting the earth first, did Dave For…

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Laurian R. Bowles, "Headstrong: Women Porters, Blackness, and Modernity in Accra" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025) 1:03:02

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Headstrong: Women Porters, Blackness, and Modernity in Accra (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025) explores the experiences of women porters, called kayayei, in Accra, Ghana. Drawing on a decade of fieldwork, anthropologist Laurian R. Bowles shows how kayayei navigate precarity, bringing into sharp relief how racialization, rooted in histories of colonialis…

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Adrian Pole, "Making Antifascist War: The International Brigades' Transnational Encounters with Civil-War Spain, 1936-1939" (Cambridge UP, 2025) 55:06

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Making Antifascist War: The International Brigades' Transnational Encounters with Civil-War Spain, 1936-1939 (Cambridge UP, 2025) is a study of the 35,000 antifascists who joined the International Brigades in order to defend the Second Spanish Republic and of their encounters with civil-war Spain. Dr. Adrian Pole offers the first in-depth history o…

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Samer Al-Saber, "A Movement's Promise: The Making of Contemporary Palestinian Theater" (Stanford UP, 2025) 32:25

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Starting in the 1970s, Palestinian theater flourished as part of a Palestinian cultural spring. In the absence of local radio, television, and uncensored journalism, theater production became the leading form of artistic expression, and Palestinian theater artists self-identified as a movement. Although resistance was not their sole function, these…

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Deborah Willis, "The Black Civil War Soldier: A Visual History of Conflict and Citizenship" (NYU Press, 2025) 35:46

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A stunning collection of stoic portraits and intimate ephemera from the lives of Black Civil War soldiers Though both the Union and Confederate armies excluded African American men from their initial calls to arms, many of the men who eventually served were black. Simultaneously, photography culture blossomed--marking the Civil War as the first con…

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Constance Bailey, "Conversations with Kiese Laymon" (UP of Mississippi, 2025) 1:07:26

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This is a very special episode of the New Books Network, as the editor of Conversations with Kiese Laymon (UP of Mississippi, 2025), Dr. Constance Bailey, discusses the process of selecting, compiling, and publishing the volume with the subject himself, award-winning author, Kiese Laymon. Conversations with Kiese Laymon provides an in-depth look at…

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Mark Archuleta, "The Reel Thrilling Events of Bank Robber Henry Starr: From Gentleman Bandit to Movie Star and Back Again" (U North Texas Press, 2025) 39:56

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In 1921 headlines across the country announced the death of Henry Starr, a burgeoning silent film star who was killed while attempting to rob a bank in Harrison, Arkansas. Cynics who knew the real Starr were not surprised. Before becoming a matinee idol, Starr had been the greatest bank robber of the horseback bandit era. Born in 1873, Cherokee out…

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Emily Vine, "Birth, Death, and Domestic Religion in Early Modern London" (Cambridge UP, 2025) 39:55

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Early modern London has long been recognised as a centre of religious diversity, yet the role of the home as the setting of religious practice for all faiths has been largely overlooked. In contrast, Birth, Death, and Domestic Religion in Early Modern London (Cambridge UP, 2025), Dr. Emily Vine offers the first examination of domestic religion in L…

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Jacinto Cuvi, "The Edge of the Law: Street Vendors and the Erosion of Citizenship in São Paulo" (U Chicago Press, 2025) 49:03

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How street vendors tangle with the law in São Paulo, Brazil. With a little initiative and very little startup money, an outgoing individual might sell you a number of delights and conveniences familiar to city dwellers—from cold water bottles while you’re sitting in traffic to a popsicle from a cart on a summer afternoon in the park. Such vendors f…

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Tea Gerbeza, "How I Bend Into More" (Anstruther Books, 2025) 38:36

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Based on Tea Gerbeza's experience with scoliosis, How I Bend Into More (Anstruther Books, 2025) re-articulates selfhood in the face of ableism and trauma. Meditating on pain, consent, and disability, this long poem builds a body both visually and linguistically, creating a multimodal space that forges Gerbeza's grammar of embodiment as an act of re…

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Authoritarian Ideas, Old and New: From Schmitt to “JD” 1:19:14

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On this episode of International Horizons, RBI Acting Director, Eli Karetny talks with Richard Wolin (Distinguished Professor, CUNY Graduate Center) about the intellectual roots of today’s anti-liberal right. Tracing a line from Germany’s “conservative revolutionaries” (Carl Schmitt, Oswald Spengler, Ernst Jünger, Heidegger) to France’s nouvelle dr…

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Jonas Enander, "Facing Infinity: Black Holes and Our Place on Earth" (The Experiment Press, 2025) 1:05:59

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Humanity's relationship with black holes began in 1783 in a small English village, when clergyman John Michell posed a startling question: What if there are objects in space that are so large and heavy that not even light can escape them? Almost 250 years later, in April 2019, scientists presented the first picture of a black hole. Profoundly inspi…

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Katherine L. French, "Household Goods and Good Households in Late Medieval London: Consumption and Domesticity After the Plague" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025) 52:31

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The Black Death that arrived in the spring of 1348 eventually killed nearly half of England's population. In its long aftermath, wages in London rose in response to labor shortages, many survivors moved into larger quarters in the depopulated city, and people in general spent more money on food, clothing, and household furnishings than they had bef…

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Kate Haulman, "The Mother of Washington in Nineteenth-Century America" (Oxford UP, 2025) 39:57

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In May 1894, President Grover Cleveland gave a speech thanking those who gathered “to worship at this national shrine.” He was not referring to the battlefields at Gettysburg or Antietam, nor to Mount Vernon, but to the gravesite of Mary Ball Washington, mother of George. While dedicating the new monument that marked it in Fredericksburg, Virginia,…

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Selim Koru, "New Turkey and the Far Right: How Reactionary Nationalism Remade a Country" (I. B. Tauris, 2025) 47:09

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Turkey is among a league of revisionist powers who are challenging the world order. Erdogan and his Islamist movement have aimed to create the “New Turkey”, preparing for a future that is less dependent on Western treaty allies and with an alliance structure of its own. In New Turkey and the Far Right: How Reactionary Nationalism Remade a Country (…

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Jean-Baptiste Fressoz, "More and More and More: An All-Consuming History of Energy" (Harper, 2025) 50:35

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It has become habitual to think of our relationship with energy as one of transition: with wood superseded by coal, coal by oil, oil by nuclear and then at some future point all replaced by green sources. Jean-Baptiste Fressoz’s devastating but unnervingly entertaining book shows what an extraordinary delusion this is. Far from the industrial era p…

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Nicholas Bromell, "The Time is Always Now: Black Political Thought and the Transformation of U.S. Democracy" (Oxford UP, 2013) 1:00:48

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Nick Bromell is the author of By the Sweat of the Brow: Labor and Literature in Antebellum American Culture and Tomorrow Never Knows: Rock and Psychedelics in the Sixties, both published by the University of Chicago Press. His articles and essays on African American literature and political thought have appeared in American Literature, American Lit…

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Robert F. Carley, "Culture and Tactics: Gramsci, Race, and the Politics of Practice" (SUNY Press, 2019) 48:49

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While scholars of social and political movements tend to analyze tactics in terms of their effectiveness in achieving specific outcomes, Robert F. Carley argues by contrast that tactics are, above all, what social movements do. They are not mere means to an end so much as they are a public form of expression pointing out injustices and making just …

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Lucy Black, "A Quilting of Scars" (Now or Never Publishing, 2025) 39:28

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In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery interviews historical fiction legend Lucy E.M Black about her phenomenal new novel, A Quilting of Scars (Now or Never Publishing, 2025). Filled with the pleasure of recognizable yet distinctively original characters and a deftly drawn sense of time and place, A Quilting of Scars brings to life a story of for…

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Edward Fishman, "Chokepoints: American Power in the Age of Economic Warfare" (Portfolio, 2025) 1:00:18

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“The acme of skill,” Sun Tzu wrote in The Art of War, is not “to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles,” but “to subdue the enemy without fighting.” The author of Chokepoints: American Power in the Age of Economic Warfare (Portfolio, 2025) has devoted much of his career to exploring how economic power can advance this goal. He served on …

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Valerie Schutte and Jessica S. Hower eds., "Mid-Tudor Queenship and Memory: The Making and Re-making of Lady Jane Grey and Mary I" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2023) 28:56

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Mid-Tudor Queenship and Memory: The Making and Re-making of Lady Jane Grey and Mary I (Palgrave MacMillan, 2023) explores (mis)representations of two female claimants to the Tudor throne, Lady Jane Grey and Mary I of England. It places Jane's attempted accession and Mary I's successful accession and reign in comparative perspective, and illustrates…

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Xiang Biao and Wu Qi, "Self as Method: Thinking Through China and the World" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022) 1:39:40

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Today I had the pleasure of talking to Professor Xiang Biao on his new book, Self as Method: Thinking Through China and the World, which was originally written and published in Chinese. The English translation has just come out with Palgrave Macmillan. Self as Method provides a manifesto of intellectual activism that counsels China’s young people t…

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Mary Beth Willard, "Why It's Ok to Enjoy the Work of Immoral Artists" (Routledge, 2021) 1:08:14

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The #metoo movement has forced many fans to consider what they should do when they learn that a beloved artist has acted immorally. One natural thought is that fans ought to give up the artworks of immoral artists, but according to Mary Beth Willard, it’s hard to find good reasons to do so. In Why It's OK to Enjoy the Work of Immoral Artists (Routl…

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Bob Wyss, "Black Gold: The Rise, Reign, and Fall of American Coal" (University of California Press, 2025) 47:28

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For decades coal has been crucial to America's culture, society, and environment, an essential ingredient in driving out winter's cold, cooking meals, and lighting the dark. In the coalfields and beyond, in Black Gold: The Rise, Reign, and Fall of American Coal (University of California Press, 2025) Bob Wyss describes how this magical elixir sparke…

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Tim Weiner, "The Mission: The CIA in the 21st Century" (Mariner Books, 2025) 51:34

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In 2007, Tim Weiner published the book Legacy of Ashes. It was a history of the CIA from its founding to the early 2000s. As a university student in Italy, I bought the book as soon as it came out. The second non-fiction book I ever bought in English. The book was riveting. It kickstarted my interest in the CIA and covert operations. Now, Tim Weine…

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Kenja McCray, "Essential Soldiers: Women Activists and Black Power Movement Leadership" (NYU Press, 2025) 1:09:54

4d ago1:09:54

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Academics and popular commentors have expressed common sentiments about the Black Power movement of the 1960s and 1970s—that it was male dominated and overrun with autocratic leaders. Yet women’s strategizing, management, and sustained work were integral to movement organizations’ functioning, and female advocates of cultural nationalism often exhi…

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Kawika Guillermo, "Of Floating Isles: On Growing Pains and Video Games" (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2025) 30:19

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An immersive journey into the author's lifelong attachment to video games, revealing how they shape us, shatter us, and give us the courage to start again Of Floating Isles: On Growing Pains and Video Games (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2025) is a captivating collection of personal essays that unpack the mystifying and often intimate roles that video games …

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Jon Mills, "End of the World: Civilization and Its Fate" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2024) 41:46

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Dr. Jon Mills, has had an impressive career as practicing professional, researcher, educator and writer in the psychology and psychoanalytic field. His work bounds the world of philosophy and psychology, focusing upon both individual human behavior and the manifestation of the collective behavior in the social context. He is the author and/or edito…

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Stefanie Mercado Altman, Claire Altman, and Stan Altman, "Twice Blessed: A Story of Unconditional Love" (Fordham UP, 2025) 52:56

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Twice Blessed (Fordham University Press, 2025) is a memoir that explores the depths of love, resilience, and the true meaning of family. Stefanie Mercado Altman, Claire Altman, and Stan Altman share an intimate and inspiring story about the bonds that define us, from adoption to caregiving and beyond. When Stefanie was adopted by Claire and Stan, …

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Wendell Marsh, "Textual Life: Islam, Africa, and the Fate of the Humanities" (Columbia UP, 2025) 53:46

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Textual Life: Islam, Africa, and the Fate of the Humanities (Columbia University Press, 2025), is a groundbreaking book that recasts the role of knowledge in the making of a colonial and postcolonial nation. It makes a case for a new literary and intellectual-historical approach to Islam in Africa. The Senegalese Muslim scholar Shaykh Musa Kamara (…

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Stuart McHardy, "Scotland's Sacred Goddess: Hidden in Plain Sight" (Luath, 2025) 27:30

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In Scotland’s Sacred Goddess: Hidden in Plain Sight (Luath Press, 2025), Stuart McHardy delves into the rich tapestry of pre-Christian Scottish beliefs, uncovering the enduring presence of ancient mythologies in today’s landscape. Long before the arrival of Christian monks, the Scots revered a pantheon of deities, with the Cailleach Goddess at its …