Best Show Motion Studios Podcasts (2025)

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Christine Shepardson, "A Memory of Violence: Syriac Christianity and the Radicalization of Religious Difference in Late Antiquity" (U California Press, 2025) 1:24:18

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4m ago1:24:18

1:24:18

A Memory of Violence: Syriac Christianity and the Radicalization of Religious Difference in Late Antiquity (U California Press, 2025) traces the rhetorical strategies of religious radicalization that encouraged fifth- and sixth-century miaphysite Christians to be willing to suffer physical deprivation and harm rather than abandon the church that th…

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Mark Goble, "Downtime: The Twentieth Century in Slow Motion" (Columbia UP, 2025) 55:11

4m ago55:11

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Slow motion is everywhere in contemporary film and media, but it wasn't always so ubiquitous. How did slow motion ascend to the dubious honor of becoming our culture's least "special" effect? And what does slow motion — a trick secured paradoxically through the camera's ever-racing speeds of capture — tell us about the temporalities and trajectorie…

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Mallory Loehr on a Life in Children's Books 52:35

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In her thirty plus years of enthusiastic dedication to Random House Children’s Books, Mallory Loehr has played a seminal role in the development of this business. She has led numerous editorial teams, working with them to develop strategies for growth, across trade and brand, for all ages and formats, including for Random House Books for Young Read…

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Owen Rees, "The Far Edges of the Known World: Life Beyond the Borders of Ancient Civilization" (Norton, 2025) 1:24:30

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When Ovid was exiled from Rome to a border town on the Black Sea, he despaired at his bleak and barbarous new surroundings. Like many Greeks and Romans, Ovid thought the outer reaches of his world was where civilization ceased to exist. Our own fascination with the Greek and Roman world has for centuries followed this perspective, shrouding culture…

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Alien: Earth Episode Analysis: In Space, No One… and The Fly 52:10

4m ago52:10

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It’s The Pop Culture Professors, and we continue our analysis of the FX series Alien: Earth with episode 5, “In Space, No One…” and episode 6, “The Fly.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network…

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Katherine Eva Maich, "Bringing Law Home: Gender, Race, and Household Labor Rights" (Stanford UP, 2025) 48:40

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The personal nature of domestic labor, and its location in the privacy of the employer's home, means that domestic workers have long struggled for equitable and consistent labor rights. The dominant discourse regards the home as separate from work, so envisioning what its legal regulation would look like is remarkably challenging. In Bringing Law H…

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The Straight Story 29:28

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Everybody was shocked when, in 1999, David Lynch released a G-rated film with a Norman Rockwell setting that didn’t have a dark underbelly or wild reveal; if you have a David Lynch bingo card, The Straight Story is the free space. And while The Straight Story is as wholesome a film as you can find, it's never sentimental or corny. Dan thinks it’s L…

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Alex R. Tipei, "Unintended Nations: How French Liberals' Empire of Civilization Remade Southeast Europe and the Post-Napoleonic World" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2025) 1:01:55

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In the wake of Napoleon’s defeat in 1815, French liberals set out to create an informal empire. Their efforts to cultivate unequal partnerships with Christian, Greek-speaking elites in southeast Europe shaped national identities and structured global civilizational hierarchies over the decades that followed. Unintended Nations: France’s Empire of C…

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Julien Mailland on "The Game That Never Ends: How Lawyers Shape the Videogame Industry" 1:10:25

4m ago1:10:25

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Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Julien Mailland, Associate Professor of Media Management, Law, and Policy at The Media School of Indiana University Bloomington, about his book, The Game That Never Ends: How Lawyers Shape the Videogame Industry. The book examines key moments, beginning in the 1970s, in which legal decisions influenced …

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Spike Bucklow, "The Year: An Ecology of the Zodiac" (Reaktion Books, 2025) 42:48

13m ago42:48

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Spike Bucklow joins Jana Byars to talk about The Year: An Ecology of the Zodiac (Reaktion, 2025). This delightful book defies genre. It is a journey through nature’s yearly cycle, blending science, history and poetic reflection.The Year takes us on a journey exploring how nature transforms across twelve months, each chapter focusing on a specific m…

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S._Africa_Sailor_Beware 53:12

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S._Africa_Sailor_Beware

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Martin Austin Nesvig, "The Women Who Threw Corn: Witchcraft and Inquisition in Sixteenth-Century Mexico" (Cambridge UP, 2025) 1:04:49

24h ago1:04:49

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The Women Who Threw Corn: Witchcraft and Inquisition in Sixteenth-Century Mexico (Cambridge UP, 2025) by Dr. Martin Austin Nesvig tells the stories of women from Spain, North Africa, Senegambia, and Canaries accused of sorcery in sixteenth-century Mexico for adapting native magic and healing practices. These non-native women – the mulata of Seville…

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Nadia Ragbar, "The Pugilist and the Sailor" (Invisible Publishing, 2025) 43:26

20m ago43:26

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In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery interview debut Toronto author, Nadia Ragbar, about her novel, The Pugilist and the Sailor (Invisible Publishing, 2025). The Pugilist and the Sailor follows conjoined twins, Bruce and Dougie. Dougie is an ambitious amateur boxer, having dragged his brother into the ring since childhood. Bruce is a bookkeeper…

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Mary-Frances O’Connor, The Grieving Body: How the Stress of Loss Can be an Opportunity for Healing (Harper One, 2025) 37:16

1d ago37:16

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The Grieving Body: How the stress of Loss Can be an Opportunity for Healing (Harper One, 2025)by Mary-Frances O’Connor, Ph.D. The follow-up to celebrated grief expert, neuroscientist, and psychologist Dr. Mary-Frances O’Connor’s The Grieving Brain focuses on the impact of grief—and life’s other major stressors—on the human body. Coping with death a…

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Amir Moosavi, "Dust That Never Settles: Literary Afterlives of the Iran-Iraq War" (Stanford UP, 2025) 28:47

1d ago28:47

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Lasting from September 1980 to August 1988, the Iran-Iraq War was the longest conventional war fought between two states in the twentieth century. It marked a period that began just after a revolutionary government in Iran became an Islamic Republic and Saddam Hussein consolidated power in Iraq. It ended with both wartime governments still in power…

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Keisha N. Blain, "Without Fear: Black Women and the Making of Human Rights" (W.W. Norton, 2025) 40:59

1d ago40:59

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Even before they were recognized as citizens of the United States, Black women understood that the fights for civil and human rights were inseparable. Over the course of two hundred years, they were at the forefront of national and international movements for social change, weaving connections between their own and others’ freedom struggles around …

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Lucy Sante, "Nineteen Reservoirs: On Their Creation and the Promise of Water for New York City (The Experiment, 2022) 36:51

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From 1907 to 1967, a network of reservoirs and aqueducts was built across more than one million acres in upstate New York, including Greene, Delaware, Sullivan, and Ulster Counties. This feat of engineering served to meet New York City’s ever-increasing need for water, sustaining its inhabitants and cementing it as a center of industry. West of the…

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“Plato and the Tyrant” with author James Romm 58:06

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In 388 BCE, Plato, at the age of about forty and in the midst of writing The Republic, visited for the first time the then-Greek city state of Syracuse, on the eastern shores of Sicily. Syracuse was ruled by a tyrant, Dionysius, who on death was followed by his son, also a tyrant. Over the course of his three separate visits to Syracuse over the ye…

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Nidhi Mahajan, "Moorings: Voyages of Capital across the Indian Ocean" (U of California Press, 2025) 1:04:03

2d ago1:04:03

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Moorings: Voyages of Capital across the Indian Ocean (U of California Press, 2025) follows sailors from the Gulf of Kachchh in India as they voyage across the Indian Ocean on mechanized wooden sailing vessels known as vahans, or dhows. These voyages produce capital through moorings that are spatial, moral, material, and conceptual. With a view from…

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Samuel Arbesman, "The Magic of Code: How Digital Language Created and Connects Our World—and Shapes Our Future" (PublicAffairs, 2025) 1:10:54

2d ago1:10:54

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In the tradition of classics such as The Lives of a Cell, a bold reframing of our relationship with technology that argues code is "a universal force--swirling through disciplines, absorbing ideas, and connecting worlds" (Linda Liukas). In the digital world, code is the essential primary building block, the equivalent of the cell or DNA in the biol…

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Huseyn Aliyev, "Who Fights for Governments? Paramilitary Mobilization in Ukraine and Beyond" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2025) 1:47:50

2d ago1:47:50

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Exploring why, when and under which circumstances individuals decide to take up arms mobilizing for pro-government militias, Huseyn Aliyev's Who Fights for Governments? Paramilitary Mobilization in Ukraine and Beyond (Bloomsbury Academic, 2025) draws on insights from long-standing ethnographic fieldwork among former and active members of Ukraine's …

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Kevin Passmore, "The Maginot Line: A New History of the Fall of France" (Yale UP, 2025) 1:06:48

2d ago1:06:48

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The Maginot Line was a marvel of 1930s engineering. The huge forts, up to eighty meters underground, contained hospitals, modern kitchens, telephone exchanges, and even electric trains. Kilometres of underground galleries led to casements hidden in the terrain, and turrets that rose from the ground to fire upon the enemy. The fortifications were in…

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

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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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The High Frontier: Gerard O’Neill’s Space Utopia 1:26:54

2d ago1:26:54

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This is the first episode of Cited Podcast’s new season, Green Dreams. Green Dreams tells stories of radical environmental thinkers and their dreams for our green future. Should we make those dreams reality, or are they actually nightmares? For the rest of the episodes, visit the series page, and subscribe today (Apple, Spotify, RSS). In the 1970s,…

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Susan Gregg Gilmore, "The Curious Calling of Leonard Bush" (Blair, 2025) 34:07

2d ago34:07

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In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Susan Glimore about her wonderful novel, The Curious Calling of Leonard Bush (Blair, 2025). Young Leonard Bush buries his lost leg and saves his whole East Tennessee town in this winsome and miracle-making novel. When twelve-year-old Leonard Bush loses his leg in a freak accident, he decides to g…

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Matthew V. Novenson, "Paul and Judaism at the End of History" (Cambridge UP, 2024) 43:23

2d ago43:23

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The apostle Paul was a Jew. He was born, lived, undertook his apostolic work, and died within the milieu of ancient Judaism. And yet, many readers have found, and continue to find, Paul's thought so radical, so Christian, even so anti-Jewish – despite the fact that it, too, is Jewish through and through. This paradox, and the question how we are to…

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Matthew Benjamin Cole, "Fear the Future: Dystopia and Political Imagination in the Twentieth Century" (U of Michigan Press, 2025) 1:48:38

2d ago1:48:38

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Are we already living in some kind of fascist or technocratic dystopia? How do we avert the AI dystopia? These are the types of things that you'll see thrown about in op-eds and analysis pieces all over the net and the press. Dystopia is doing some kind of work in our political vocabulary that goes beyond a reference to those iconic dystopian novel…