Best Intergovernmental Podcasts (2025)

1
Philip Rocco, "Counting Like a State: How Intergovernmental Partnerships Shaped the 2020 US Census" (UP Kansas, 2025) 53:40

Play Pause

10d ago53:40

53:40

Marquette University Political Scientist Phil Rocco has a new book focusing on the 2020 U.S. Census and how the states, localities, and federal government all worked – at times well, at times not quite as well – to conduct the census. This is a fascinating exploration of federalism at work in the American system, with some states putting in place e…

1
The Backsliders: Why Leaders Undermine Their Own Democracies 53:00

1h ago53:00

53:00

This week on Democracy Dialogues, co-hosts Rachel Beatty Riedl and Esam Boraey speak with Susan C. Stokes, Tiffany and Margaret Blake Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago and Director of the Chicago Center on Democracy. Drawing from her book The Backsliders: Why Leaders Undermine Their Own Democracies (P…

1
161 One Battle After Another: A West Newton Cinema Discussion with Peter Coviello and Ethan Warren (JP) 33:53

3d ago33:53

33:53

One Battle After Another, the spirited and controversial Oscar contender from Paul Thomas Anderson, premiered in September. That opening weekend featured a "Behind the Screen" premiere at the storied West Newton cinema. Why "behind"? Because Marisa Pagano and J.B. Sloan of the West Newton Cinema Foundation) invited RTB to oversee a fascinating post…

1
Mark Griffiths, "Checkpoint 300: Colonial Space in Palestine" (U Minnesota Press, 2025) 47:04

4d ago47:04

47:04

Checkpoint 300, the highly securitized border facility between occupied Bethlehem and Jerusalem, is a central feature of Israeli control of Palestinian land and life. An apparatus of turnstiles, overcrowded corridors, and invasive inspections, the checkpoint regulates the movement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, granting access to some wh…

1
Brooke Barbier, "King Hancock: The Radical Influence of a Moderate Founding Father" (Harvard UP, 2023) 49:32

5d ago49:32

49:32

King Hancock: The Radical Influence of a Moderate Founding Father (Harvard UP, 2023) is a rollicking portrait of the paradoxical patriot, whose measured pragmatism helped make American independence a reality. Americans are surprisingly more familiar with his famous signature than with the man himself. In this spirited account of John Hancock's life…

1
Is a River Alive?: A Conversation with Robert Macfarlane 34:00

3d ago34:00

34:00

Hailed in the New York Times as "a naturalist who can unfurl a sentence with the breathless ease of a master angler," Robert Macfarlane brings his glittering style to a profound work of travel writing, reportage, and natural history. Is a River Alive? (W.W. Norton, 2025) is a joyful, mind-expanding exploration of an ancient, urgent idea: that river…

1
Brooke Barbier, "King Hancock: The Radical Influence of a Moderate Founding Father" (Harvard UP, 2023) 49:32

3d ago49:32

49:32

King Hancock: The Radical Influence of a Moderate Founding Father (Harvard UP, 2023) is a rollicking portrait of the paradoxical patriot, whose measured pragmatism helped make American independence a reality. Americans are surprisingly more familiar with his famous signature than with the man himself. In this spirited account of John Hancock's life…

1
Philip Pettit, "The State" (Princeton UP, 2023) 43:12

4d ago43:12

43:12

In The State (Princeton University Press, 2023), the prominent political philosopher Philip Pettit embarks on a massive undertaking, offering a major new account of the foundations of the state and the nature of justice. In doing so, Pettit builds a new theory of what the state is and what it ought to be, addresses the normative question of how jus…

1
Yoram Hazony, "Conservatism: A Rediscovery" (Regnery Publishing, 2022) 1:09:23

8d ago1:09:23

1:09:23

Conservatism needs to be rediscovered. That is, it needs to be differentiated from the post WWII concept of liberal democracy and return to its traditional three pillars of religion, nationalism, and economic growth. And it needs to be thought of as Anglo-American conservatism, rooted in the tradition of the English Constitution going back to such …

1
Yoram Hazony, "Conservatism: A Rediscovery" (Regnery Publishing, 2022) 1:09:23

6d ago1:09:23

1:09:23

Conservatism needs to be rediscovered. That is, it needs to be differentiated from the post WWII concept of liberal democracy and return to its traditional three pillars of religion, nationalism, and economic growth. And it needs to be thought of as Anglo-American conservatism, rooted in the tradition of the English Constitution going back to such …

1
Philip Rocco, "Counting Like a State: How Intergovernmental Partnerships Shaped the 2020 US Census" (UP Kansas, 2025) 53:40

10d ago53:40

53:40

Marquette University Political Scientist Phil Rocco has a new book focusing on the 2020 U.S. Census and how the states, localities, and federal government all worked – at times well, at times not quite as well – to conduct the census. This is a fascinating exploration of federalism at work in the American system, with some states putting in place e…

1
Jonathan Eig, "King: A Life" (FSG, 2023) 39:22

8d ago39:22

39:22

Vividly written and exhaustively researched, Jonathan Eig's King: A Life (FSG, 2023) is the first major biography in decades of the civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr.--and the first to include recently declassified FBI files. In this revelatory new portrait of the preacher and activist who shook the world, the bestselling biographer gives us …

1
Joe Greenwood-Hau," Capital, Privilege and Political Participation" (Liverpool UP, 2025) 45:23

11d ago45:23

45:23

Who gets involved in politics? In Capital, Privilege and Political Participation (Liverpool UP, 2025) Joe Greenwood-Hau a Lecturer in the John Smith Centre at the University of Glasgow, examines the dynamics of who participates, who is excluded and the reasons why. Drawing on a broad approach to political participation, the analysis connects levels…

1
Nina Wilén, "Securitizing the Sahel: Analyzing External Interventions and Their Consequences" (Oxford UP, 2025) 52:01

10d ago52:01

52:01

The Sahel has become a focal point of international security interventions, with external actors providing extensive security force assistance (SFA) to local military, police, and paramilitary forces. Securitizing the Sahel: Analyzing External Interventions and Their Consequences (Oxford UP, 2025) by Dr. Nina Wilen critically examines the rationale…

1
Jim Cullen, "1980: America's Pivotal Year" (Rutgers UP, 2022) 41:44

14d ago41:44

41:44

1980 was a turning point in American history. When the year began, it was still very much the 1970s, with Jimmy Carter in the White House, a sluggish economy marked by high inflation, and the disco still riding the airwaves. When it ended, Ronald Reagan won the presidency in a landslide, inaugurating a rightward turn in American politics and cultur…

1
Democracy and Freedom: The Role of Philanthropy and Education 44:50

14d ago44:50

44:50

This week, we feature an episode with Dr. Alvaro Salas-Castro, President and CEO of the Reynolds Foundation, and Founder and Chairman of the Democracy Lab Foundation, which fosters civic innovation. We discuss the current state of the freedom and democracy movement, how philanthropic partnerships and democracy defenders are responding to authoritar…

1
John Bodnar, "Divided by Terror: American Patriotism after 9/11" (UNC Press, 2021) 1:08:06

13d ago1:08:06

1:08:06

September 11th, 2001 marked the beginning of the so-called war on terror, but the attacks of that day also re-ignited battles over the nature of American patriotism. In Divided by Terror: American Patriotism after 9/11 (UNC Press, 2021), Professor John Bodnar argues that the nature of patriotism as being war-based or empathetic divided the nation a…

1
David Chanoff, "Anthony Benezet: Quaker, Abolitionist, Anti-Racist" (U Georgia Press, 2025) 46:50

15d ago46:50

46:50

Wilberforce, Clarkson, Wesley. Britain’s great abolitionist activist Granville Sharp. Each of these consequential figures of the eighteenth-century Atlantic world were galvanized by the moral power of a modest Quaker teacher who never ventured more than a few miles from his home in Philadelphia: Anthony Benezet. While Benezet was buried in an unmar…

1
Margaret Grace Myers, "The Fight for Sex Ed: The Century-Long Battle Between Truth and Doctrine" (Beacon Press, 2025) 39:08

16d ago39:08

39:08

The US has some of the highest rates of STIs and teen pregnancies in the industrialized world. A comprehensive sex education curriculum—which teaches facts on contraception, prophylactics, consent, and STIs—has been available since the 90s. Yet the majority of states require that sex education stress abstinence, and 22 states do not require sex ed …

1
Can America Still Lead? Foreign Policy in an Age of Division with Joel Rubin 1:00:55

14d ago1:00:55

1:00:55

What happens when America loses its foreign-policy playbook? RBI acting director Eli Karetny talks with veteran diplomat and policy strategist Joel Rubin about the vacuum of strategic vision shaping U.S. decisions from Venezuela to Ukraine to Gaza. Rubin pulls back the curtain on factional battles inside both parties, the dangers of politicizing di…

1
Killian Clarke, "Return of Tyranny: Why Counterrevolutions Emerge and Succeed" (Cambridge UP, 2025) 1:05:01

14d ago1:05:01

1:05:01

Why do some revolutions fail and succumb to counterrevolutions, whereas others go on to establish durable rule? Marshalling original data on counterrevolutions worldwide since 1900 and new evidence from the reversal of Egypt's 2011 revolution, in Return of Tyranny: Why Counterrevolutions Emerge and Succeed (Cambridge UP, 2025) Dr. Killian Clarke ex…

1
Emily Callaci, "Wages for Housework: The Feminist Fight Against Unpaid Labor" (Seal Press, 2025) 46:07

16d ago46:07

46:07

Across the globe in the 1970s, a network of feminists distilled their struggles into a single demand: Wages for Housework! Today, it remains a provocative idea, and an unfulfilled promise. In Wages for Housework: The Story of a Movement, an Idea, a Promise (Penguin/Seal Press 2025), historian Emily Callaci tells the story of this campaign by explor…

1
Simon Appleford, "Drawing Liberalism: Herblock's Political Cartoons in Postwar America" (U Virginia Press, 2023) 56:44

14d ago56:44

56:44

Drawing Liberalism: Herblock's Political Cartoons in Postwar America (U Virginia Press, 2023) is the first book-length critical examination of the political and social impact of the political cartoonist Herbert Block--popularly known as Herblock. Working for the Washington Post, Herblock played a central role in shaping, propagandizing, and defendi…

1
Can Feminism be African?: A Conversation with Minna Salami 34:01

17d ago34:01

34:01

Transcript of the interview Minna Salami is a writer, social critic, and thought leader on feminism, knowledge production, and the aesthetics and structures of power. She formerly served as Programme Chair and Senior Fellow at THE NEW INSTITUTE, where she led the Black Feminism and the Polycrisis programme. Her work sits at the intersection of idea…

1
160* Hannah Arendt's Refugee Politics (JP) 21:04

15d ago21:04

21:04

John's “Arendt's Refugee Politics” came out in Public Books in early November. He made the case that his favorite political philosopher, Hannah Arendt is an opponent both of identity politics and also of a cosmpolitan universalism that is blind to all the differences (of race, gender, belief) that make us who though not what we are. Going back to o…

1
Nicholas Buccola, "One Man’s Freedom: Goldwater, King, and the Struggle Over an American Ideal" (Princeton UP, 2025) 1:15:40

18d ago1:15:40

1:15:40

From the acclaimed author of The Fire Is upon Us, the dramatic untold story of Barry Goldwater and Martin Luther King Jr.'s decade-long clash over the meaning of freedom--and how their conflicting visions still divide American politics In the mid-1950s, Barry Goldwater and Martin Luther King Jr. emerged as the leaders of two diametrically opposed f…

1
Carl Benedikt Frey, "How Progress Ends: Technology, Innovation, and the Fate of Nations" (Princeton UP, 2025) 54:29

18d ago54:29

54:29

In How Progress Ends: Technology, Innovation, and the Fate of Nations (Princeton University Press, 2025), Carl Benedikt Frey challenges the conventional belief that economic and technological progress is inevitable. For most of human history, stagnation was the norm, and even today progress and prosperity in the world's largest, most advanced econo…

1
Emily Winderman, "Back-Alley Abortion: A Rhetorical History (JHU Press, 2025) 32:57

16d ago32:57

32:57

How did three words come to carry the weight of America's abortion debates? In Back-Alley Abortion: A Rhetorical History (JHU Press, 2025), Dr. Emily Winderman examines how this phrase shaped American reproductive politics and health care standards across generations. Drawing on extensive archival research, the book traces the unexpected origins of…

1
Nicholas Buccola, "One Man’s Freedom: Goldwater, King, and the Struggle Over an American Ideal" (Princeton UP, 2025) 1:15:40

18d ago1:15:40

1:15:40

From the acclaimed author of The Fire Is upon Us, the dramatic untold story of Barry Goldwater and Martin Luther King Jr.'s decade-long clash over the meaning of freedom--and how their conflicting visions still divide American politics In the mid-1950s, Barry Goldwater and Martin Luther King Jr. emerged as the leaders of two diametrically opposed f…

1
On Democracy and Bullshit with Hélène Landemore 1:06:15

17d ago1:06:15

1:06:15

Today I’m speaking with Hélène Landemore, Professor of Political Science at Yale University, about Democracy and Bullshit, with a special focus on her 2020 book, Open Democracy: Reinventing Popular Rule for the Twenty-First Century (Princeton University Press, 2020). Bullshit is a feature of both democracies and dictatorships alike, but it takes di…

1
On Democracy and Bullshit with Hélène Landemore 1:06:15

19d ago1:06:15

1:06:15

Today I’m speaking with Hélène Landemore, Professor of Political Science at Yale University, about Democracy and Bullshit, with a special focus on her 2020 book, Open Democracy: Reinventing Popular Rule for the Twenty-First Century (Princeton University Press, 2020). Bullshit is a feature of both democracies and dictatorships alike, but it takes di…

1
Philip Nash, "Clare Boothe Luce: American Renaissance Woman" (Routledge, 2022) 1:04:56

18d ago1:04:56

1:04:56

Philip Nash's book Clare Boothe Luce: American Renaissance Woman (Routledge, 2022) is a concise and highly readable political biography that examines the life of one of the most accomplished American women of the 20th century. Wife and mother, author, editor, playwright, political activist, war journalist, Congresswoman, ambassador, pundit, and fem…

1
Lucy Caplan, "Dreaming in Ensemble: How Black Artists Transformed American Opera" (Harvard UP, 2025) 59:59

20d ago59:59

59:59

Recently, musicologists and others have started writing about Black participation in opera. Lucy Caplan’s Dreaming in Ensemble: How Black Artists Transformed American Opera (Harvard UP, 2025) is a major new publication on this topic. Caplan examines what she calls a Black operatic counterculture in the US dating from the performance of H. Lawrence …