Best Migration Policy Institute Podcasts (2025)

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Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan, "Overdetermined: How Indian English Literature Becomes Ethnic, Postcolonial, and Anglophone" (Columbia UP, 2025) 1:11:58

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Why is it so difficult to account for the role of identity in literary studies? Why do both writers and scholars of Indian English literature express resistance to India and Indianness? What does this reveal about how non-Western literatures are read, taught, and understood? Drawing on years of experiences in classrooms and on U.S. university campu…

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Taylor Byas, "Resting Bitch Face: Poems" (Catapult, 2025) 1:01:13

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The author of the award-winning national bestseller I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times returns with a poetry collection that transforms the Black female speaker from object, artistic muse, and victim to subject, critic, and master of her story. Resting Bitch Face (Soft Skull Press, 2025) is a book for women, for Black women, for lovers of art and …

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Farah Ghafoor, "Shadow Price: Poems" (House of Anansi, 2025) 34:50

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In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery interviews Farah Ghafoor about her poetry collection, Shadow Price (House of Anansi, 2025), which was longlisted for the 2025 Toronto Book Awards. Borrowing its title from a finance term—“the estimated price of a good or service for which no market price exists”—Shadow Price is a stunning debut that examines…

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Joshua Eisenman and David H. Shinn, "China's Relations with Africa: A New Era of Strategic Engagement" (Columbia UP, 2023) 1:42:23

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Since Xi Jinping’s accession to power in 2012, nearly every aspect of China’s relations with Africa has grown dramatically. Beijing has increased the share of resources it devotes to African countries, expanding military cooperation, technological investment, and educational and cultural programs as well as extending its political influence. China'…

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Sven Völker, "The Museum of Shapes" (Cicada Books, 2025) 56:43

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Welcome to the Museum of Shapes. Alma is the curator of the museum. She decides which shapes should go where. Triangles have three sides and three angles. Can you help Alma find all the triangles on the shelves? Almas favorite shape is a circle. All the points on the edge of a circle are the same distance from its center. Not all shapes are geometr…

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Clay Risen, "Red Scare: Blacklists, McCarthyism, and the Making of Modern America" (Simon and Schuster, 2025) 1:09:37

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From an award-winning historian and New York Times reporter comes the timely story about McCarthyism that both “lays out the many mechanisms of repression that made the Red Scare possible…[and] describes how something that once seemed so terrifying and interminable did, in fact, come to an end” (The New Yorker)—based in part on newly declassified s…

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Tyler Jost, "Bureaucracies at War: The Institutional Origins of Miscalculation" (Cambridge UP, 2024) 49:23

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Why do states start conflicts that they ultimately lose? Why do leaders possess inaccurate expectations of their prospects for victory? Bureaucracies at War (Cambridge UP, 2024) examines how national security institutions shape the quality of bureaucratic information upon which leaders base their choice for conflict – which institutional designs pr…

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Aram G. Sarkisian, "Orthodoxy on the Line: Russian Orthodox Christians and Labor Migration in the Progressive Era" (NYU Press, 2025) 55:33

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Orthodoxy on the Line: Russian Orthodox Christians and Labor Migration in the Progressive Era (NYU Press, 2025) is an Immigration and labor history of the Russian Orthodox Church in the US At the turn of the twentieth century, thousands of immigrants from the borderlands of the Russian and Austro-Hungarian Empires built a transnational church in No…

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Scott D. Seligman, "The Chief Rabbi's Funeral" (U Nebraska Press, 2024) 55:46

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On July 30, 1902, tens of thousands of mourners lined the streets of New York’s Lower East Side to bid farewell to the city’s chief rabbi, the eminent Talmudist Jacob Joseph. All went well until the procession crossed Sheriff Street, where the six-story R. Hoe and Company printing press factory towered over the intersection. Without warning, scraps…

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Illiberalism, Putin, and the Politics of Religion 1:09:15

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In this episode of International Horizons, Eli Karetny speaks with Marlene Laruelle, Research Professor at George Washington University and director of the Illiberalism Studies Program, about the rise of illiberalism in Russia and beyond. They explore how illiberal movements define themselves against liberalism, Russia’s evolution since the 1990s, …

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Miranda Spieler, "Slaves in Paris: Hidden Lives and Fugitive Histories" (Harvard UP, 2025) 53:33

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In the decades leading up to the French Revolution, when Paris was celebrated as an oasis of liberty, slaves fled there, hoping to be freed. They pictured Paris as a refuge from France’s notorious slave-trading ports. The French were late to the slave trade, but they dominated the global market in enslaved people by the late 1780s. This explosive g…

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Zara Anishanslin, "The Painter's Fire: A Forgotten History of the Artists Who Championed the American Revolution" (Harvard UP, 2025) 49:59

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Virginia Woolf, "The Life of Violet: Three Early Stories" (Princeton UP, 2025) 44:43

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Alex Egodotaye Asakitikpi and Aretha Oluwakemi Asakitikpi, "Modern Nigeria" (Bloomsbury, 2024) 50:40

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Susannah Fisher, "Sink Or Swim: How the World Needs to Adapt to a Changing Climate" (Bloomsbury, 2025) 34:05

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Michael Glass, "Cracked Foundations: Debt and Inequality in Suburban America" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025) 1:02:29

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Andrew Lambert, "No More Napoleons: How Britain Managed Europe from Waterloo to World War One" (Yale UP, 2025) 53:54

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Genocide Studies International Vol 16.1, Special Issue on The Future of Genocide Education 53:55

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Delivering for Democracy – Why results matter 32:41

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In The Life of a Showgirl, Taylor Swift Addresses Love, Glamour, and Grit 30:55

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Hannah Pool, "The Game: The Economy of Undocumented Migration from Afghanistan to Europe" (Oxford UP, 2025) 51:19

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The Perils of Tantra, with Susannah Deane 57:11

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Today, host Prof. Pierce Salguero sits down with Susannah Deane, a scholar of Tibetan medicine, Buddhism, and psychiatry. Together, we delve into her work on Tibetan concepts of "wind disorders" and Tantric practice gone wrong. Along the way, we talk about losing control of spirits, becoming a deity, and how Tibetans choose between religious and me…

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Katherine J. Parkin, "The Abortion Market: Buying and Selling Access in the Era Before Roe" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025) 42:15

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The abortion market was a powerful economic force in American life. Before legalization lowered the cost, one million women each year collectively paid upward of $750 million for abortions. In The Abortion Market: Buying and Selling Access in the Era Before Roe (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2025), Dr. Katherine Parkin reveals the strength of a…

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Marion Orr, "House of Diggs: The Rise and Fall of America's Most Consequential Black Congressman, Charles C. Diggs Jr." (UNC Press, 2025) 59:46

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At the height of the civil rights movement, Charles C. Diggs Jr. (1922-1998) was the consummate power broker. In a political career spanning 1951 to 1980, Diggs, Michigan's first Black member of Congress, was the only federal official to attend the trial of Emmett Till's killers, worked behind the scenes with Martin Luther King Jr., and founded the…

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Digital Expressions of the Self(ie): The Social Life of Selfies in India 23:45

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Selfies are more than fleeting images—across India, they shape how people imagine themselves, connect with others, and inhabit spaces. In this episode of the Nordic Asia Podcast, Prof. Xenia Zeiler from the University of Helsinki talks to Prof. Avishek Ray about his co-authored book Digital Expressions of the Self(ie): The Social Life of Selfies in…

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Richard Duncan, "The Money Revolution: How to Finance the Next American Century" (John Wiley & Sons, 2022) 55:06

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In The Money Revolution: How to Finance the Next American Century, economist and bestselling author Richard Duncan lays out a farsighted strategy to maximize the United States' unmatched financial and technological potential. In compelling fashion, the author shows that the United States can and should invest in the industries and technologies of t…

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Justine De Young, "The Art of Parisian Chic: Modern Women and Modern Artists in Impressionist Paris" (Bloomsbury, 2025) 1:11:17

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Using artworks by Berthe Morisot, Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and others, The Art of Parisian Chic: Modern Women and Modern Artists in Impressionist Paris (Bloomsbury, 2025) by Dr. Justine De Young explores how women and artists in Impressionist Paris (1855-1885) crafted their public images to exploit and resist stereotypes.…

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Colleen Dulle, "Struck Down, Not Destroyed: Keeping the Faith as a Vatican Reporter" (Image, 2025) 58:48

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Vatican journalist Colleen Dulle discusses her new book, Struck Down, Not Destroyed: Keeping the Faith as a Vatican Reporter, a memoir of the last seven years. In 2018, she started for the Jesuit Review, America Magazine, and that was when all of the terrible revelations of sexual abuse scandals, lies and coverups, about [former cardinal, later def…

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Vartan Matiossian, "The Color of Choice: The Armenians and the Politics of Race in the United States and Germany (1890-1945)" (Brill, 2025) 1:19:09

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The extensive research literature on race has paid little attention to Armenians. Between the two world wars, they had to prove that they were free white persons to ensure their naturalization in the United States, while in Nazi Germany they needed to document that they were stakeholders of the Aryan race to safeguard their existence. Vartan Matios…

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Digital Expressions of the Self(ie): The Social Life of Selfies in India 25:30

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Selfies are more than fleeting images—across India, they shape how people imagine themselves, connect with others, and inhabit spaces. In this episode of the Nordic Asia Podcast, Prof. Xenia Zeiler from the University of Helsinki talks to Prof. Avishek Ray about his co-authored book Digital Expressions of the Self(ie): The Social Life of Selfies in…

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Monica Liu, "Seeking Western Men: Email-Order Brides Under China's Global Rise" (Stanford UP, 2022) 41:24

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Commercial dating agencies that facilitate marriages across national borders comprise a $2.5 billion global industry. Ideas about the industry are rife with stereotypes-younger, more physically attractive brides from non-Western countries being paired with older Western men. These ideas are more myth than fact, Monica Liu finds in Seeking Western M…

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Emma Ashford, "First Among Equals: U. S. Foreign Policy in a Multipolar World" (Yale UP, 2025) 35:24

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A fresh, concise roadmap for U.S. grand strategy in a multipolar world For the past thirty years, post-Cold War triumphalism and a desire to reshape the world have defined U.S. foreign policy. But the failures of the global war on terror, the return of conflict to Europe, and growing tensions with China all suggest that this approach to the world i…

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Meredith L. Roman, "The Black Panthers and the Soviets: A Comparative History of Human Rights Movements" (Bloomsbury, 2025) 54:10

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The contemporaneous movements for human rights that Soviet rights defenders and the Black Panthers waged during the 1960s are analysed in a comparative fashion here for the very first time. The book also examines the extra-legal measures that both the KGB and FBI employed to destroy them. The Black Panthers and the Soviets: A Comparative History of…

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Angela Jones and Barbara G. Brents, "Sex Work Today: Erotic Labor in the Twenty-First Century" (NYU Press, 2024) 37:29

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A cutting-edge volume on current trends in sex work, from sugar relationships and cyber brothels to financial domination, sex worker activism, and feminist porn Sex is for sale in more ways than ever. It can be bought and sold online, in sex clubs, on the street, and around the world. As with many industries, discrimination, exploitation, and inequ…

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John Mathias, "Uncommon Cause: Living for Environmental Justice in Kerala" (U California Press, 2024) 54:27

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How can activists strike a balance between fighting for a cause and sustaining relationships with family, friends, and neighbors? In this episode John Mathias joins host Elena Sobrino to talk about Uncommon Cause: Living for Environmental Justice in Kerala (2024, University of California Press). Uncommon Cause follows environmental justice activist…

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Amanda Belantara and Emily Drabinski, "Ways of Knowing: Oral Histories on the Worlds Words Create" (Litwin Books, 2024) 36:15

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Ways of Knowing: Oral Histories on the Worlds Words Create (Litwin Books, 2025) sits at the heart of the library project, shaping how materials are described and organized and how they can be retrieved. The field has long understood that normative systems like Dewey Decimal and Library of Congress do this inadequately and worse, deploying language …

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Carlotta Daro, "The Architecture of the Wire: Infrastructures of Telecommunication" (MIT Press, 2025) 37:23

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The Architecture of the Wire explores the development of telecommunications infrastructure and its impact on the architectural and urban culture of the modern age—from poles, wires, and cables, to “micro-architectures,” such as the théâtrophone and the telephone booth. Starting with the intrepid worldwide infrastructures of the late nineteenth cent…

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David M. Whitford, "The Making of a Reformation Man: Martin Luther and the Construction of Masculinity" (Routledge, 2025) 57:59

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David Whitford joins Jana Byars to talk about his new book, The Making of a Reformation Man: Martin Luther and the Construction of Masculinity (Routledge, 2025). This volume explores how Martin Luther's life and teachings reshaped and redefined masculinity during the Reformation, offering a more nuanced portrayal of him as a man grappling with the …

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Cooper Smith, "Allusive and Elusive: Allusion and the Elihu Speeches of Job 32-37" (Brill, 2022) 31:12

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Within the Book of Job, Elihu is one of the most diversely evaluated characters. For example, are Elihu’s speeches so insignificant he’s absolutely ignored afterward, or do they actually form an introduction to the speeches of the LORD? What are we to make of Elihu? Find out as we speak with Cooper Smith about his recent monograph, Allusive and Elu…

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Marcia C. Schenck, "Remembering African Labor Migration to the Second World: Socialist Mobilities between Angola, Mozambique, and East Germany" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022) 45:23

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This open access book is about Mozambicans and Angolans who migrated in state-sponsored schemes to East Germany in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s. They went to work and to be trained as a vanguard labor force for the intended African industrial revolutions. While they were there, they contributed their labor power to the East German econom…

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Xiaobo Lü, "Domination and Mobilization: The Rise and Fall of Political Parties in China's Republican Era" (Cambridge UP, 2025) 57:25

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How and why did the Chinese Communist Party rise to power in the 1940s at the expense of its Nationalist (KMT) rival? In his new book, Domination and Mobilization: The Rise and Fall of Political Parties in China’s Republican Era (Cambridge University Press, 2025), Professor Xiaobo Lü (UC Berkeley) adopts a new model for thinking about this question…

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Alicia M. Walker and Arielle Kuperberg, "Bound by BDSM: Unexpected Lessons for Building a Happier Life" (Bloomsbury, 2025) 38:34

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Why are BDSM practitioners so happy? It turns out, BDSM isn't just about whips and chains. With engaging stories and a warm, conversational tone, Bound by BDSM: Unexpected Lessons for Building a Happier Life (Bloomsbury Acacdemic, 2025) by Dr. Alicia M. Walker and Dr. Arielle Kuperberg reveals how BDSM practitioners use clear boundaries, enthusiast…

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Sarah Hurwitz, "As a Jew: Reclaiming Our Story from Those Who Blame, Shame, and Try to Erase Us" (HarperOne, 2025) 50:28

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An urgent exploration of how antisemitism has shaped Jewish identity and how Jews can reclaim their tradition, by the celebrated White House speechwriter and author of the critically acclaimed Here All Along. At thirty-six, Sarah Hurwitz was a typical lapsed Jew. On a whim, she attended an introduction to Judaism class and was astonished by what sh…

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Suzy Levinson, "Dinos That Drive" (Tundra Books, 2025) 50:46

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Suzy Levinson is a children’s author and poet whose work has been featured in numerous anthologies, including A World Full of Poems (DK Children), I Am a Jigsaw (Bloomsbury Education), and Shaping the World (Macmillan), and magazines, including Highlights and Cricket. Her critically acclaimed debut picture book–length poetry collection, Animals in …

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Octavian Gabor, "Immigrant on Earth: A Philosopher on the Road to Emmaus" (Wipf and Stock, 2025) 1:05:09

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In a world where faith and reason are perceived as enemies, this book describes them as companions. Readers of Immigrant on Earth: A Philosopher on the Road to Emmaus (Wipf and Stock, 2025) are invited to travel into the souls of ordinary people and the minds of philosophers and theologians, experience the meekness coming from faith, or attempt to …

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Audrey Golden, "Shouting Out Loud: Lives of the Raincoats" (Da Capo Press, 2025) 43:17

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In Shouting Out Loud: Lives of The Raincoats (Da Capo Press, 2025) Audrey Golden traces the history of the iconic band The Raincoats staring of the founding by Art students Gina Birch and Ana da Silva in 1977. Since the release of their seminal early records, the band has been revered by punk, queer, feminist, and indie pop artists alike.The Rainco…

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Danya Ruttenberg, "On Repentance and Repair: Making Amends in an Unapologetic World" (Beacon Press, 2022) 31:46

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Winner of the National Jewish Book Awards in Contemporary Jewish Life & Practice and Myra H. Kraft Memorial Award On Repentance and Repair: Making Amends in an Unapologetic World (Beacon Press, 2022) is a crucial new lens on repentance, atonement, forgiveness, and repair from harm—from personal transgressions to our culture's most painful and unres…

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Gerta Keller, "The Last Extinction: The Real Science Behind the Death of the Dinosaurs" (Diversion Books, 2025) 59:52

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The story behind Dr. Gerta Keller’s world-shattering scientific discovery that dinosaur extinction was NOT caused by asteroid impact, but rather by volcanic eruptions on the Indian peninsula, a discovery that highlights today’s existential threat of greenhouse gasses and climate change—and one that sparked an all-out war waged by the scientific est…

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Georgios Varouxakis, "The West: The History of an Idea" (Princeton UP, 2025) 1:09:52

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How did “the West” come to be used as a collective self-designation signaling political and cultural commonality? When did “Westerners” begin to refer to themselves in this way? Was the idea handed down from the ancient Greeks, or coined by nineteenth-century imperialists? Neither, writes Georgios Varouxakis in The West: The History of an Idea (Pri…

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Árni Heimir Ingólfsson, "Music at World's End: Three Exiled Musicians from Nazi Germany and Austria and Their Contribution to Music in Iceland" (SUNY Press, 2025) 55:47

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A fascinating story of how three musicians, who escaped the Nazis, inspired Iceland's modern classical music. In Iceland in the 1930s, classical music was only beginning to be seriously practiced, at the same time when musicians of Jewish heritage were fleeing Nazi Germany and Austria. Despite the country's strict immigration policy, three outstand…