Best Rob Springer Podcasts (2025)

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AI, News, and the State: Reinstitutionalising Journalism in Global China’s Algorithmic Age: A conversation with Dr. Joanne Kuai 34:27

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4d ago34:27

34:27

How is artificial intelligence transforming journalism as both a profession and an institution? In this episode, Ning Ao speaks to Dr. Joanne Kuai, exploring how AI reshapes journalistic roles, organisational structures, and governance systems through the lens of China’s media landscape—while drawing comparisons with the US and EU. Dr. Joanne Kuai …

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Muhammad Atique, "Algorithmic Saga: Understanding Media, Culture, and Transformation in the AI Age" (Atique Mindscape Publishing, 2024) 46:04

5d ago46:04

46:04

In an age when digital media permeates every aspect of our lives, understanding its influence is more critical than ever. Algorithmic Saga: Understanding Media, Culture, and Transformation in the AI Age (Atique Mindscape Publishing, 2025), serves as a compass, guiding readers through the complexities of our interconnected world. From the moment we …

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Martin Moore and Thomas Colley, "Dictating Reality: The Global Battle to Control the News" (Columbia UP, 2025) 1:00:44

6d ago1:00:44

1:00:44

From the United States to China and from Brazil to India, an authoritarian approach to news is spreading across the world. Increasingly, the media is no longer a check on power or a source of objective information but a means by which governments and leaders can propagate their versions of reality, however biased or false. In Dictating Reality: The…

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Tamar Mitts, "Safe Havens for Hate: The Challenge of Moderating Online Extremism" (Princeton UP, 2025) 45:21

7d ago45:21

45:21

Content moderation on social media has become one of the most daunting challenges of our time. Nowhere is the need for action more urgent than in the fight against terrorism and extremism. Yet despite mass content takedowns, account suspensions, and mounting pressure on technology companies to do more, hate thrives online. Safe Havens for Hate: The…

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Rob Wells, "The Insider: How the Kiplinger Newsletter Bridged Washington and Wall Street" (U Massachusetts Press, 2022) 23:27

7d ago23:27

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When Willard M. Kiplinger launched the groundbreaking Kiplinger Washington Letter in 1923, he left the sidelines of traditional journalism to strike out on his own. With a specialized knowledge of finance and close connections to top Washington officials, Kiplinger was uniquely positioned to tell deeper truths about the intersections between govern…

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Nora Kenworthy, "Crowded Out: The True Costs of Crowdfunding Healthcare" (MIT Press, 2024) 44:28

7d ago44:28

44:28

In Crowded Out: The True Costs of Crowdfunding Healthcare (MIT Press, 2024), Dr. Nora Kenworthy presents an eye-opening investigation into charitable crowdfunding for healthcare in the United States—and the consequences of allowing healthcare access to be decided by the digital crowd. Over the past decade, charitable crowdfunding has exploded in po…

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Stevie Suan, "Anime's Identity: Performativity and Form Beyond Japan" (U Minnesota Press, 2021) 58:38

18d ago58:38

58:38

A formal approach to anime rethinks globalization and transnationality under neoliberalism Anime has become synonymous with Japanese culture, but its global reach raises a perplexing question--what happens when anime is produced outside of Japan? Who actually makes anime, and how can this help us rethink notions of cultural production? In Anime's I…

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Maggie Gram, "The Invention of Design: A Twentieth-Century History" (Basic Books, 2025) 1:03:03

21d ago1:03:03

1:03:03

Maggie Gram is a writer, cultural historian, and designer. She leads an experience-design team at Google. She has taught at the Maryland Institute College of Art, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, and Harvard University, and she has written for N+1 and the New York Times. She lives in New York. The Invention of Design: A Twentieth-Century History (…

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Petar Mitric, "The Co-production Landscape in Europe: From Eurimages to Netflix" (Springer Nature, 2025) 49:56

22d ago49:56

49:56

The Co-production Landscape in Europe: From Eurimages to Netflix (Springer Nature, 2025) explores the evolving landscape of European film and television co-productions, from traditional models supported by Eurimages to new collaborations shaped by global streaming platforms like Netflix. It examines how European co-production policies have influenc…

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Najmeh Moradiyan-Rizi and Shilyh J. Warren eds., "Women and Global Documentary: Practices and Perspectives in the 21st Century" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2025) 33:46

22d ago33:46

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Women and Global Documentary: Practices and Perspectives in the 21st Century (Bloomsbury Academic, 2025), edited by Najmeh Moradiyan-Rizi and Shilyh J. Warren, answers the urgent need to re-evaluate not only the significance of women's documentary practices and their contributions to feminist world-building, but also the state of documentary studie…

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John R. Davis, "Keep Your Ear to the Ground: A History of Punk Fanzines in Washington, DC" (Georgetown UP, 2025) 56:00

27d ago56:00

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John R. Davis's Keep Your Ear to the Ground (Georgetown University Press, 2025) is the first history of the fanzines that emerged from Washington, DC's highly influential punk community DIY culture has always been at the heart of DC's thriving punk community. As Washington, DC's punk scene emerged in the mid-1970s, so did the periodicals--"fanzines…

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Will Kitchen, "Culture, Capital and Carnival: Modern Media and the Representation of Work" (Bloomsbury, 2025) 41:14

27d ago41:14

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How is the world of work depicted on page and on screen? In Culture, Capital and Carnival: Modern Media and the Representation of Work Dr Will Kitchen, an Associate Lecturer at Arts University Bournemouth explores this question using a series of literary and media case studies. Drawing on Bakhtin’s theories of the carnivalesque, the book assesses t…

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

1M ago25:30

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

1M ago37:23

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

1M ago36:15

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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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Michelle Bumatay, "On Black Bandes Dessinées and Transcolonial Power" (Ohio State UP, 2025) 49:29

1M ago49:29

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On Black Bandes Dessinées and Transcolonial Power (The Ohio State UP, 2025) is the first book-length study in English about Black francophone cartoonists and their work. Author Michelle Bumatay decenters Eurocentric conceptions of francophone comic art and foregrounds the ubiquity of Western racial stereotypes encoded in mainstream French and Belgi…

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Greg Lukianoff and Nadine Strossen, "The War on Words: 10 Arguments Against Free Speech—And Why They Fail" (Heresy Press, 2025) 52:35

1M ago52:35

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The War on Words: 10 Arguments Against Free Speech—And Why They Fail (Heresy Press, 2025) constitutes a bulwark against the persistent censorial efforts from both the political left and right. At a time when conformist pressures threaten viewpoint diversity, and when political attacks on free expression are mounting, this book is a valuable resourc…

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Ashleigh Wade on How Black Girls Use Social Media 1:20:13

1M ago1:20:13

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Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Ashleigh Greene Wade, Assistant Professor of Digital Studies with a joint appointment in Media Studies and African American Studies at the University of Virginia, about her book, Black Girl Autopoetics: Agency and Possibility in Everyday Digital Practice. The book examines how black girls use social med…

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Joel Best, "Just the Facts: Untangling Contradictory Claims" (U California Press, 2025) 43:46

2M ago43:46

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Why can’t we seem to agree on facts? In this succinct volume, sociologist Joel Best turns his inimitable eye toward the social construction of what we think is true. He evaluates how facts emerge from our social worlds—including our beliefs, values, tastes, and norms—and how they align with those worlds’ standards. He argues that by developing a so…

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Gabrielle Durepos and Amy Thurlow, "Archival Research in Historical Organisation Studies: Theorising Silences" (Emerald Publishing, 2025) 1:08:59

2M ago1:08:59

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Archival Research in Historical Organisation Studies: Theorising Silences offers an accessible account of theorising the archive, contesting the narrow definitions of the archive with a view beyond a mere repository of documents. Scholars Gabrielle Durepos and Amy Thurlow discuss the ways that business archives have marginalized various populations…

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Alisha Karabinus et al. eds., "Historiographies of Game Studies: What It Has Been, What It Could Be" (Punctum Books, 2025) 27:01

2M ago27:01

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Historiographies of Game Studies: What It Has Been, What It Could Be (Punctum Books, 2025) offers a first-of-its-kind reflection on how game studies as an academic field has been shaped and sustained. Today, game studies is a thriving field with many dedicated national and international conferences, journals, professional societies, and a strong pr…

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Laura Garbes, "Listeners Like Who?: Exclusion and Resistance in the Public Radio Industry" (Princeton UP, 2025) 42:07

2M ago42:07

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Why is radio so white? In Listeners Like Who? Exclusion and Resistance in the Public Radio Industry (Princeton UP, 2025) Laura Garbes, a Sociologist and Assistant Professor at the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities, explores the history of public radio, theorising it as a white institutional space. Alongside the rich history and theoretical fram…

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Alfred L. Martin Jr. and Taylor Cole Miller eds., "The Golden Girls: Tales from the Lanai" (Rutgers UP, 2025) 1:12:09

2M ago1:12:09

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The Golden Girls: Tales from the Lanai (Rutgers UP, 2025) is an accessible collection that explores the cultural, industrial, and historical impact of that beloved American sitcom. Edited by Taylor Cole Miller and Alfred L. Martin, Jr., this anthology brings together a diverse range of voices that model different media studies approaches to researc…

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j. Siguru Wahutu, "In the Shadow of the Global North: Journalism in Postcolonial Africa" (Cambridge UP, 2025) 1:08:59

2M ago1:08:59

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In the Shadow of the Global North: Journalism in Postcolonial Africa (Cambridge UP, 2025) unpacks the historical, cultural, and institutional forces that organize and circulate journalistic narratives in Africa to show that something complex is unfolding in the postcolonial context of global journalistic landscapes, especially the relationships bet…

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Justin Wyatt, "Creating the Viewer: Market Research and the Evolving Media Ecosystem" (U Texas Press, 2024) 1:07:28

2M ago1:07:28

1:07:28

Creating the Viewer: Market Research and the Evolving Media Ecosystem (U Texas Press, 2024) is a study of the largely hidden world of primary media market research and the different methods used to understand how the viewer is pictured in the industry. The first book on the intersection between market research and media, Creating the Viewer takes a…

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Margaret E. Roberts, "Censored: Distraction and Diversion Inside China’s Great Firewall" (Princeton UP, 2020) 50:55

2M ago50:55

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We often think of censorship as governments removing material or harshly punishing people who spread or access information. But Margaret E. Roberts’ new book Censored: Distraction and Diversion Inside China’s Great Firewall (Princeton University Press, 2020) reveals the nuances of censorship in the age of the internet. She identifies 3 types of cen…

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Olga Touloumi, "Assembly by Design: The United Nations and Its Global Interior" (U Minnesota Press, 2024) 58:05

2M ago58:05

58:05

For almost seven years after World War II, a small group of architects took on an exciting task: to imagine the spaces of global governance for a new political organization called the United Nations (UN). To create the iconic headquarters of the UN in New York City, these architects experimented with room layouts, media technologies, and design in …

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Patricia Aufderheide, "Kartemquin Films: Documentaries on the Frontlines of Democracy" (U California Press, 2024) 1:24:21

2M ago1:24:21

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Kartemquin Films: Documentaries on the Frontlines of Democracy (U California Press, 2024) traces how filmmaker-philosophers brought the dream of making documentaries and strengthening democracy to award-winning reality—with help from nuns, gang members, skateboarders, artists, disability activists, and more. The evolution of Kartemquin Films—Peabod…

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Intercultural Communication 51:14

2M ago51:14

51:14

In this episode of the Language on the Move Podcast, Dr Loy Lising speaks with Distinguished Professor Ingrid Piller about the 3rd edition of her best-selling textbook Intercultural Communication (Edinburgh UP, 2025). A comprehensive and critical overview of the field of intercultural communication Key concepts and discussions illuminated with inte…

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Vanessa Diaz, "Manufacturing Celebrity: Latino Paparazzi and Women Reporters in Hollywood" (Duke UP, 2020) 50:01

2M ago50:01

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While Hollywood’s images present a veneer of fantasy for some, the work to create such images is far from escapism. In Manufacturing Celebrity: Latino Paparazzi and Women Reporters in Hollywood (Duke University Press, 2020), anthropologist Vanessa Díaz examines the raced and gendered hierarchies and inequalities that are imbricated within the work …

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Juan Llamas-Rodriguez ed., "Media Travels: Toward an Atlas of Global Media" (Amherst College Press, 2025) 50:39

3M ago50:39

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Media Travels: Toward An Atlas of Global Media (Amherst College Press, 2025) fills a significant gap in global media scholarship by offering short, readable articles covering different types of media from around the world. Through careful and informed analysis, these eleven accessibly written chapters illustrate the particularities of different med…

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"Assignment Moscow" with author James Rodgers 56:41

3M ago56:41

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Is it possible to do independent journalism in today’s Russia? “The short answer is no,” James Rodgers tells me in our conversation about his insightful and scrupulously researched book Assignment Moscow: Reporting on Russia from Lenin to Putin (Bloomsbury Academic, 2023). Rodgers is a former BBC correspondent in Moscow. We first talk about Western…

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Rob Goodman, "Words on Fire: Eloquence and Its Conditions" (Cambridge UP, 2021) 44:32

3M ago44:32

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Why is political rhetoric broken – and how can it be fixed? Words on Fire: Eloquence and Its Conditions (Cambridge University Press, 2022) returns to the origins of rhetoric to recover the central place of eloquence in political thought. Eloquence, for the orators of classical antiquity, emerged from rhetorical relationships that exposed both speak…

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Joshua Nall, "News from Mars: Mass Media and the Forging of a New Astronomy, 1860-1910" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2019) 1:04:04

3M ago1:04:04

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In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, we’re hearing an awful lot about the fraught relationship between science and media. In his book, News from Mars: Mass Media and the Forging of a New Astronomy, 1860-1910 (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019), historian of science Joshua Nall shows us that a blurry boundary between science and journalism was …

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Transhuman Horror in Alien: Earth 42:56

3M ago42:56

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It’s The Pop Culture Professors, and today we react to the first two episodes of Alien: Earth. We break down the themes and ideas in the series, focusing on its central questions of transhumanism, the Peter Pan mythology, and the dream / nightmare imagery. We consider how this series is consistent with and differs from the Alien (1979) and Aliens (…

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David de Boer, "The Early Modern Dutch Press in an Age of Religious Persecution" (Oxford UP, 2023) 34:47

3M ago34:47

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David de Boer returns to the podcast to talk to Jana Byars about his first book, The Early Modern Dutch Press in the Age of Religious Persecution (Oxford UP, 2023). This book is available open source here. For victims of persecution around the world, attracting international media attention for their plight is often a matter of life and death. This…

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Matthew Facciani, "Misguided: Where Misinformation Starts, How It Spreads, and What to Do about It" (Columbia UP, 2025) 30:29

3M ago30:29

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Why are people inclined to believe misinformation? Misguided: Where Misinformation Starts, How It Spreads, and What to Do about It (Columbia UP, 2025) is a wide-ranging and comprehensive book that shines a light on how false beliefs take root and spread, exploring the cognitive, emotional, and social factors that make us all susceptible to misinfor…

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Jirí Anger, "Towards a Film Theory from Below: Archival Film and the Aesthetics of the Crack-Up" (Bloomsbury, 2024) 1:01:34

3M ago1:01:34

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Jiří Anger is a scholar, archivist, and videographic critic devoted, as he says in this interview, to "making weird shapes shine." In this episode of New Books in Film, Anger sits down with Alix Beeston to discuss his award-winning book Towards a Film Theory from Below: Archival Film and the Aesthetics of the Crack-Up. Anger's book is an experime…

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Meredith McCarroll, "Unwhite: Appalachia, Race, and Film" (U Georgia Press, 2018) 1:02:14

3M ago1:02:14

1:02:14

If you mention Appalachia to many people, they may immediately respond with the "Deliverance" dueling banjos theme. Unfortunately, this is an example of how the region is stereotyped and misunderstood, particularly in films. In her book, Unwhite: Appalachia, Race, and Film(University of Georgia Press, 2018), Meredith McCarroll, Director of Writing …

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Nathan Wainstein, "Grant Us Eyes: The Art of Paradox in Bloodborne" (2025) 24:13

3M ago24:13

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Grant Us Eyes is a book-length close reading of Bloodborne by literary critic Nathan Wainstein (LA Review of Books, Cartridge Lit, American Book Review). Grant Us Eyes situates the game’s oft-discussed difficulty in relation to a much longer tradition of difficult art – surrealist painting, the modernist novel, etc. Wainstein probes the difficulty …

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The Social Impact of Automating Translation 56:37

3M ago56:37

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In this episode of the Language on the Move Podcast, Tazin Abdullah speaks with Dr. Esther Monzó-Nebot, Associate Professor in Translation and Interpreting Studies at Universitat Jaume I in Catalunya. They talk about Dr. Monzó-Nebot's new book The Social Impact of Automating Translation: An Ethics of Care Perspective on Machine Translation. The con…

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Y. Kokosalakis and F. J. Leira-Castiñeira, "Violence and Propaganda in European Civil Wars" (Routledge, 2025) 52:19

3M ago52:19

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Violence and Propaganda in European Civil Wars explores the complex interplay between violence and propaganda during the continent's major civil conflicts in the first half of the 20th century. The book, edited by Yiannis Kokosalakis and Francisco J. Leira Castiñeira, uses a multidisciplinary approach to analyze how propaganda both reflected and fu…

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Bradley Morgan, "Frank Zappa's America" (LSU Press, 2025) 48:11

3M ago48:11

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From his early albums with the Mothers of Invention, Frank Zappa established a reputation as a musical genius who pushed the limits of culture throughout the 1960s and 1970s, experimenting with a blend of genres in innovative and unheard-of ways. Not only did his exploratory styles challenge the expectations of what popular music could sound like, …

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Suruchi Mazumdar, "Divided Media: Politics and Mediated Movements in India" (Routledge, 2025) 1:10:48

3M ago1:10:48

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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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Gavin Williams, "Format Friction: Perspectives on the Shellac Disc" (U Chicago Press, 2024) 1:07:47

3M ago1:07:47

1:07:47

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

3M 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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Nadya Bair, "The Decisive Network: Magnum Photos and the Postwar Image Market" (U California Press, 2020) 38:05

3M ago38:05

38:05

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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Paul A. Thomas, "Inside Wikipedia: How It Works and How You Can Be an Editor" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022) 55:42

4M ago55:42

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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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Cameron Kunzelman, "The World is Born from Zero: Understanding Speculation and Video Games" (de Gruyter, 2022) 37:34

4M ago37:34

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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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Brian Fauteux, "Music in Orbit: Satellite Radio in the Streaming Space Age" (Univ of California Press, 2025) 1:14:36

4M ago1:14:36

1:14:36

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 …