Best Transatlantic Crime Podcasts (2025)

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Susan Erikson, "Investable! When Pandemic Risk Meets Speculative Finance" (MIT Press, 2025) 35:03

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14h ago35:03

35:03

Investable! When Pandemic Risk Meets Speculative Finance (MIT Press, 2025) by Dr. Susan Erikson presents a critical and sobering look at how international bankers and investors turn pandemics into investment opportunities, and what we stand to lose when we rely on “innovative finance.” In a world increasingly defined by crisis, bankers and investor…

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Masaya Llavaneras Blanco and Damien P. Gock eds., "Pandemic Policies and Resistance: Southern Feminist Critiques in Times of Covid-19" (Bloomsbury, 2025) 43:31

3d ago43:31

43:31

Offering Southern feminist assessments of detailed case studies from 12 countries, this open access book Pandemic Policies and Resistance: Southern Feminist Critiques in Times of Covid-19 (Bloomsbury, 2025) provides crucial insights into the gendered repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic on macroeconomics, labour, migration and human mobilities, a…

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Breanne Pleggenkuhle and Joseph A. Schafer, "Crime, Corrections, and the COVID-19 Pandemic: Responses and Adaptations in the US Criminal Justice System" (Southern Illinois UP, 2025) 24:20

15d ago24:20

24:20

While COVID-19 lockdowns affected nearly everyone worldwide, feelings of anxiety and fear were exacerbated for those already entangled in the criminal justice system. Scholars recognized the unique opportunity to study crime and the justice system’s response during this period, though they soon realized that determining the pandemic’s effects would…

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May Friedman, "Fat Studies: The Basics" (Routledge, 2025) 23:15

22h ago23:15

23:15

Fat Studies: The Basics (Routledge, 2025) introduces the reading of fat bodies and the ways that Fat Studies, as a field, has responded to waves of ideas about fat people, their lives, and choices. Part civil rights discourse and part academic discipline, Fat Studies is a dynamic project that involves contradiction and discussion. In order to under…

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Helen C. Epstein, "Why Live: An Anatomy of Suicide Epidemics" (Columbia Global Reports, 2025) 31:34

20d ago31:34

31:34

What causes suicide epidemics—and how can we prevent them? Many suicides are caused by biological mental illness, but sometimes the suicide rate of a particular group jumps—two-, three-, or even ten-fold—in a short time, behaving like an epidemic. Suicide epidemics unfold more slowly than microbial plagues like flu or malaria, but they happen far t…

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Susan C. Boyd, "Heroin: An Illustrated History" (Fernwood, 2022) 45:23

16d ago45:23

45:23

Dr. Susan Boyd is a scholar/activist and Distinguished Professor emerita at the University of Victoria. Her research examines a variety of topics related to the history of drug prohibition and resistance to it, drug law and policy, including maternal drug use, maternal/state conflicts, film and culture, radio and print media, heroin assisted-treatm…

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Stacia Kalinoski, Racing Uphill: Confronting a Life with Epilepsy (U of Minnesota Press, 2025) 31:01

21d ago31:01

31:01

The book, Racing Uphill: Confronting a Life with Epilepsy (U of Minnesota Press, 2025), is a memoir and an educational resource, which tells the story of an Emmy Award-winning TV news Journalist, Stacia Kalinoski. The author's aim is beyond giving an account of her experience of epilepsy, her goal is to sensitize readers and inspire epileptic patie…

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Manuel Barcia, "The Yellow Demon of Fever: Fighting Disease in the 19th-Century Transatlantic Slave Trade" (Yale UP, 2020) 48:40

2M ago48:40

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As we now know, epidemics and pandemics are not new phenomena. In her new book The Yellow Demon of Fever: Fighting Disease in the 19th-Century Transatlantic Slave Trade (Yale University Press, 2020), Manuel Barcia offers a striking rendition of the diseases that swept through the illegal slave trade Atlantic World. In fact, Barcia argues that the h…

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Lewis A. Grossman, "Choose Your Medicine: Freedom of Therapeutic Choice in America" (Oxford UP, 2021) 42:39

2M ago42:39

42:39

Throughout American history, lawmakers have limited the range of treatments available to patients, often with the backing of the medical establishment. The country's history is also, however, brimming with social movements that have condemned such restrictions as violations of fundamental American liberties. This fierce conflict is one of the defin…

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Melody Glenn, "Mother of Methadone: A Doctor's Quest, a Forgotten History, and a Modern-Day Crisis" (Beacon Press, 2025) 43:35

2M ago43:35

43:35

Dr. Melody Glenn was a burned-out emergency physician who had grown to resent the large population of opioid dependent patients passing through her ER. While working at a methadone clinic, she realized how effective harm reduction treatments could be and set out to discover why they weren’t used more broadly. That’s when she found Dr. Marie Nyswand…

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Judith Grisel, "Never Enough: The Neuroscience and Experience of Addiction" (Doubleday, 2019) 1:00:13

1M ago1:00:13

1:00:13

Not a lot of authors go from spending their early twenties homeless and addicted to cocaine to becoming one of the world’s leading researchers on the neuroscience of addiction. But Dr. Judith Grisel, in her new book Never Enough: The Neuroscience and Experience of Addiction (Doubleday, 2019), uses her personal story to illuminate the ways in which …

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Tricia Starks, "Smoking Under the Tsars: A History of Tobacco in Imperial Russia" (Cornell UP, 2018) 1:00:09

2M ago1:00:09

1:00:09

How and when did Russia become a country of smokers? Why did makhorka and papirosy become ubiquitous products of tobacco consumption? Tricia Starks explores these themes as well as the connections between tobacco, gender, and empire in her latest monograph, Smoking Under the Tsars: A History of Tobacco in Imperial Russia (Cornell University Press, …

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Joseph Gfroerer, "War Stories from the Drug Survey: How Culture, Politics, and Statistics Shaped the National Survey on Drug Use and Health" (Cambridge UP, 2018) 57:27

2M ago57:27

57:27

Joseph Gfroerer spent nearly 40 years working as a statistician for the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). Starting in 1988, when the American drug war was taking its current shape, he led the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), one of the federal governmen…

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Childhood malnutrition and pneumonia in Timor-Leste 31:52

2M ago31:52

31:52

Dr Nick Fancourt is a Horizon Fellow and Senior Lecturer in the Sydney Medical School. He also works as a paediatrician at the Children’s Hospital at Westmead. Nick researches childhood pneumonia, particularly in low and middle income countries. He lived in Timor-Leste from 2018-2020, working with local partners on intitiatives to strengthen commun…

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Rene Almeling, Lisa Campo-Engelstein, Brian T. Nguyen eds., "Seminal: On Sperm, Health, and Politics" (NYU Press, 2025) 40:01

2M ago40:01

40:01

In Seminal: On Sperm, Health, and Politics, Rene Almeling, Lisa Campo-Engelstein, and Brian T. Nguyen come together across disciplines to offer a kaleidoscopic view of the relationship between sperm, health, and the intersecting politics of gender, race, and reproduction. Always insightful and often provocative, the essays in this unprecedented col…

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Ela Przybylo, "Ungendering Menstruation" (U Minnesota Press, 2025) 40:35

2M ago40:35

40:35

Ungendering Menstruation by Ela Przybyło discusses why and how menstrual pain needs to be incorporated into discussions of gender, embodiment, and disability. Honing a "cranky" approach to being a menstruating body expected to accept and embrace trauma, Ungendering Menstruation examines menstrual suppression, toxicity, and the cooptation of menstru…

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Ben Westhoff, "Fentanyl, Inc.: How Rogue Chemists Are Creating the Deadliest Wave of the Opioid Epidemic" (Grove Press, 2019) 45:03

2M ago45:03

45:03

Ben Westhoff is an award-winning investigative journalist whose best-selling 2019 book Fentanyl, Inc.: How Rogue Chemists Are Creating the Deadliest Wave of the Opioid Epidemic (Grove Press, 2019), was one of the first to take fentanyl seriously as both a social phenomenon and a national threat. Since its release, Westhoff has become a policy exper…

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Richard Scheib, "A Viewing Guide to the Pandemic: Depictions of Plague and Pandemic on Film and TV" (Headpress, 2025) 35:23

2M ago35:23

35:23

Richard Scheib's A Viewing Guide to the Pandemic (Headpress, 2025) is a film book like no other. It opens with the author's first-hand account of the Covid-19 pandemic and life in lockdown. His sense of dread, and anxiety about his state of health, were experiences shared with millions of others across the world. For author Richard Scheib, already …

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Dayna Bowen Matthew, "Just Health: Treating Structural Racism to Heal America" (NYU Press, 2022) 46:53

2M ago46:53

46:53

In the United States, systemic racism is embedded in policies and practices, thereby structuring American society to perpetuate inequality and all of the symptoms and results of that inequality. Racial, social, and class inequities and the public health crises in the United States are deeply intertwined, their roots and manifestations continually p…

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Andréa Becker, "Get It Out: On the Politics of Hysterectomy" (NYU Press, 2025) 28:59

2M ago28:59

28:59

At least one hysterectomy is performed every minute of the year, making it the most common gynecological surgery worldwide. By the age of sixty-five, one out of five people born with a uterus will have it removed. So, why do we seldom talk about this surgery? Highly performed yet overlooked, examining the paradox of hysterectomy begins to unravel t…

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Episode 10: Why The '90s Matter 30:48

3M ago30:48

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The 1990s were a pivotal decade for the United States and the world. This season on None Of The Above, we rewinded to the ‘90s to cover the breakup of the Soviet Union, America’s unipolar moment, and the rise of China. We explored civil war in Afghanistan, the spread of nuclear weapons, South Africa’s transition to democracy, and much more. The ‘90…

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Marc Sapir, "I'll Fly Away: Stories About Amazing Disabled Elders" (2025) 48:39

3M ago48:39

48:39

We all hope to grow old with dignity and some joyfulness. The intimate narratives of 40 extraordinary elders shared in I'll Fly Away: Stories About Amazing Disabled Elders explore both the challenges of aging and the joys and vibrancy that often persist in the twilight years. Poignant observations of the patients and families by a team of health pr…

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Laura Frances Goffman, "Disorder and Diagnosis: Health and the Politics of Everyday Life in Modern Arabia" (Stanford UP, 2024) 49:05

3M ago49:05

49:05

Disorder and Diagnosis: Health and the Politics of Everyday Life in Modern Arabia (Stanford UP, 2024) offers a social and political history of medicine, disease, and public health in the Persian Gulf from the late nineteenth century until the 1973 oil boom. Foregrounding the everyday practices of Gulf residents--hospital patients, quarantined passe…

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Carolyn Wolf-Gould et al., "A History of Transgender Medicine in the United States" (SUNY Press, 2025) 1:03:01

3M ago1:03:01

1:03:01

A History of Transgender Medicine in the United States (SUNY Press, 2025) takes an empathic approach to an embattled subject. Sweeping in scope and deeply personal in nature, this groundbreaking volume traces the development of transgender medicine across three centuries-centering the voices of transgender individuals, debunking myths about gender-…

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David Zweig, "An Abundance of Caution: American Schools, the Virus, and a Story of Bad Decisions" (MIT Press, 2025) 57:39

3M ago57:39

57:39

An Abundance of Caution: American Schools, the Virus, and a Story of Bad Decisions (MIT Press, 2025) is a devastating account of the decision-making process behind one of the worst American policy failures in a century—the extended closures of public schools during the pandemic. In fascinating and meticulously reported detail, David Zweig shows how…

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Episode 9: A Military Without Rival 39:12

3M ago39:12

39:12

The military and the very idea of national security changed a lot in the 1990s. Politicians promised a new period of peace and prosperity after the Cold War, but the military would not draw down from the international arena. On the contrary, the United States turned to policing the world, and the military carried out new types of missions meant to …

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Our New Book is Out! 1:21

3M ago1:21

1:21

Sadly, the podcast has come to an end. However, there is still so much to learn and discover about the links between modern Britain and the Transatlantic Slave Trade, which is why we're pleased to announce that our book Human Resources: Slavery and the Making of Modern Britain in 39 Institutions, People, Places and Things is out now. Picking up whe…

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Jenn Hobbs, "Bodily Fluids, Fluid Bodies and International Politics: Feminist Technoscience, Biopolitics and Security" (Bristol University Press, 2024) 1:00:05

4M ago1:00:05

1:00:05

In recent years, security actors have become increasingly concerned with health issues. Bodily Fluids, Fluid Bodies and International Politics: Feminist Technoscience, Biopolitics and Security (Bristol University Press, 2024) by Dr. Jenn Hobbs reveals how understandings of race, sexuality and gender are produced/reproduced through healthcare policy…

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Carol A. Heimer, "Governing the Global Clinic: HIV and the Legal Transformation of Medicine" (University of Chicago Press, 2025) 1:01:30

4M ago1:01:30

1:01:30

HIV emerged in the world at a time when medicine and healthcare were undergoing two major transformations: globalization and a turn toward legally inflected, rule-based ways of doing things. It accelerated both trends. While pestilence and disease are generally considered the domain of biological sciences and medicine, social arrangements—and law i…

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Joshua Howe and Alexander Lemons "Warbody: A Marine Sniper and the Hidden Violence of Modern Warfare" (W. W. Norton & Company, 2025) 1:06:24

4M ago1:06:24

1:06:24

A friendship between an environmental historian and a chronically ill US Marine yields a powerful exploration into the toxic effects of war on the human body. Alexander Lemons is a Marine Corps scout sniper who, after serving multiple tours during the Iraq War, returned home seriously and mysteriously ill. Joshua Howe is an environmental historian …

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Nicholas Chesterley, "Future-Generation Government: How to Legislate for the Long Term" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2025) 34:28

4M ago34:28

34:28

Our impact on future generations has never been greater, and the challenges we face are increasingly long-term. Future-Generation Government proposes ways that we can reward our governments for making durable policy decisions that anticipate future crises. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices…

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Episode 8: The Cost of Humanitarian Intervention 43:12

4M ago43:12

43:12

When the Cold War ended, many imagined a more peaceful world. Yet the 1990s were marked by humanitarian crises in Somalia, Rwanda, and former Yugoslavia. Images of mass atrocities and genocide reached wide audiences on newly available 24/7 TV news channels, as humanitarians increasingly advocated for military intervention. The United States under B…

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Michael Buser, "Ecologies of Care in Times of Climate Change: Water Security in the Global Context" (Policy Press, 2024) 35:41

4M ago35:41

35:41

Ecologies of Care in Times of Climate Change: Water Security in the Global Context (Policy Press, 2024) investigates and analyses places in Europe, North America and Asia that are facing the immense challenges associated with climate change adaptation. Presenting real-world cases in the contexts of coastal change, drinking water and the cryosphere,…

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Episode 7: America's China Gamble 41:25

4M ago41:25

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China’s violent Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989 marked a turning point in US-China relations. After two decades of slowly but steadily nurturing friendly relations, the United States would choose to develop economic ties without insisting on democratic reforms. The prevailing hope was that China’s economic growth would inevitably lead to politic…

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Sharon Udasin and Rachel Frazin, "Poisoning the Well: How Forever Chemicals Contaminated America" (Island Press, 2025) 45:19

5M ago45:19

45:19

This is the shocking true-life story of how PFAS—a set of toxic chemicals most people have never heard of—poisoned the entire country. Based on original, shoe-leather reporting in four highly contaminated towns and damning documents from the polluters’ own files, Poisoning the Well: How Forever Chemicals Contaminated America (Island Press, 2025) tr…

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Chloe Ahmann, "Futures After Progress: Hope and Doubt in Late Industrial Baltimore" (U Chicago Press, 2024) 35:32

5M ago35:32

35:32

Factory fires, chemical explosions, and aerial pollutants have inexorably shaped South Baltimore into one of the most polluted places in the country. In Futures After Progress: Hope and Doubt in Late Industrial Baltimore (U Chicago Press, 2024), anthropologist Chloe Ahmann explores the rise and fall of industrial lifeways on this edge of the city a…

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Caitlin Killian, "Understanding Reproduction in Social Contexts" (Bloomsbury, 2025) 1:04:52

5M ago1:04:52

1:04:52

In today's post-Roe v. Wade world, U.S. maternal mortality is on the rise and laws regarding contraception, involuntary sterilization, access to reproductive health services, and criminalization of people who are gestating are changing by the minute. Today I’m joined by Dr. Caitlin Killian, the editor of and one of the contributors to a new book fr…

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Sudan and the Limits of Western Peacebuilding (from the archive) 26:33

5M ago26:33

26:33

Sudan’s civil war recently entered its third year. It has claimed the lives of around 150,000 people and displaced around 13 million. In this archival episode, we revisit the outbreak of violence that erupted in April 2023 between the Sudanese Army, led by Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and a paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Forces, led by…

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Daniel A. Rodriguez, "The Right to Live in Health: Medical Politics in Postindependence Havana" (U North Carolina Press, 2020) 51:58

5M ago51:58

51:58

Daniel A. Rodriguez's history of a newly independent Cuba shaking off the U.S. occupation, The Right to Live in Health: Medical Politics in Postindependence Havana (University of North Carolina Press, 2020), focuses on the intersection of public health and politics in Havana. While medical policies were often used to further American colonial power…

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Jonathan D. Cohen, "Losing Big: America's Dangerous Sports Gambling Boom" (Columbia Global Reports, 2025) 56:01

5M ago56:01

56:01

In 2018, the United States Supreme Court opened the floodgates for states to legalize betting on sports. Eager for revenue, almost forty states have done so. The result is the explosive growth of an industry dominated by companies like FanDuel and DraftKings. One out of every five American adults gambled on sports in 2023, amounting to $121 billion…

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Pandemic Power: The Covid Response and the Erosion of Democracy - A Liberal Critique 1:03:20

5M ago1:03:20

1:03:20

In this episode, host Andrea Talabér (CEU Press) sat down with Muriel Blaive to talk about her new book with CEU Press, Pandemic Power: The Covid Response and the Erosion of Democracy - A Liberal Critique. In the podcast we talked about the (failure of the) pandemic response, the necessity of critique, being shadowbanned on Facebook, censorship, an…

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Episode 6: How Apartheid Ended in South Africa 40:05

5M ago40:05

40:05

In the 1990s, South Africa ended apartheid, a brutal system of racial segregation, and became a democracy. During the Cold War, the United States supported South Africa’s apartheid government because it was anti-communist. But American civil rights activists pushed Washington to reassess its support – which it did as the Cold War wound down. Nelson…

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Womanist Bioethics: Social Justice, Spirituality, and Black Women's Health 58:58

6M ago58:58

58:58

Black people, and especially Black women, suffer and die from diseases at much higher rates than their white counterparts. The vast majority of these health disparities are not attributed to behavioral differences or biology, but to the pervasive devaluation of Black bodies. Womanist Bioethics: Social Justice, Spirituality, and Black Women’s Health…

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Tiffany D. Joseph, "Not All In: Race, Immigration, and Health Care Exclusion in the Age of Obamacare" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2025) 1:06:04

6M ago1:06:04

1:06:04

Despite progressive policy strides in health care reform, immigrant communities continue to experience stark disparities across the United States. In Not All In: Race, Immigration, and Health Care Exclusion in the Age of Obamacare (Johns Hopkins UP, 2025), Tiffany D. Joseph exposes the insidious contradiction of Massachusetts' advanced health care …

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Jeremy Brown, "The Eleventh Plague: Jews and Pandemics from the Bible to COVID-19" (Oxford UP, 2023) 1:00:17

6M ago1:00:17

1:00:17

In The Eleventh Plague: Jews and Pandemics from the Bible to COVID-19 (Oxford UP, 2023), Brown investigates the relation between Judaism and infectious diseases throughout the ages, from premodern and early-modern plagues, to rabbinic responses to smallpox and cholera, to the special vulnerabilities Jewish immigrants faced in the US as result of pr…

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Mara Mills et al., "How to Be Disabled in a Pandemic" (NYU Press, 2025) 1:22:43

6M ago1:22:43

1:22:43

How to Be Disabled in a Pandemic is the first book to document the experiences of those hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City—disabled people. Diverse disability communities across the five boroughs have been disproportionately impacted by city and national policies, work and housing conditions, stigma, racism, and violence—as much …

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Episode 5: Why the Israel-Palestine Peace Process Failed 45:19

6M ago45:19

45:19

The 1990s witnessed a turning point in one of the world’s most intractable disputes. After four decades of conflict, the 1991 Madrid Conference opened the door for peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians. A flurry of negotiations and agreements followed. The Camp David Summit in 2000 was the Clinton administration’s last-ditch attempt to prod…

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Amy Adamczyk, "Fetal Positions: Understanding Cross-National Public Opinion about Abortion" (Oxford UP, 2025) 57:20

6M ago57:20

57:20

Most people think about abortion in the context of the country they live in. In the U.S., abortion fuels debate, elections, and legislation. In China, abortion is often treated as a settled issue. Why and how do abortion attitudes vary across the world? In her new book, Fetal Positions: Understanding Cross-National Public Opinion about Abortion (Ox…

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In Covid’s Wake: How our Politics Failed Us--A Conversation with Stephen Macedo (Part 2) 52:57

6M ago52:57

52:57

This week on Madison’s Notes, we continue our discussion with Stephen Macedo, co-author of In COVID’s Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us (Princeton UP, 2025). The book examines the institutional failures during the pandemic, including the politicization of science, inconsistent messaging, and the disproportionate impacts of policies. We cover key que…

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Jade S. Sasser, "Climate Anxiety and the Kid Question" (U California Press, 2024) 56:55

6M ago56:55

56:55

Eco-anxiety. Climate guilt. Pre-traumatic stress disorder. Solastalgia. The study of environmental emotions and related mental health impacts is a rapidly growing field, but most researchers overlook a closely related concern: reproductive anxiety. Climate Anxiety and the Kid Question (U California Press, 2024) is the first comprehensive study of h…