Best Cornell University Press Podcasts (2025)

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1869, Ep. 173 with David Busch, author of Disciplining Democracy 31:31

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2h ago31:31

31:31

Use promo code 09POD to save 30% on Disciplining Democracy:https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501779961/disciplining-democracy/#bookTabs=1Transcript: https://otter.ai/u/f-IjI_UwKzxZDGAq30_d5x4VQGc?utm_source=copy_urlFor over a decade, David Busch has worked as an educator and program administrator in both academic and public settings. He…

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Xiang Biao and Wu Qi, "Self as Method: Thinking Through China and the World" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022) 1:39:40

1d ago1:39:40

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Today I had the pleasure of talking to Professor Xiang Biao on his new book, Self as Method: Thinking Through China and the World, which was originally written and published in Chinese. The English translation has just come out with Palgrave Macmillan. Self as Method provides a manifesto of intellectual activism that counsels China’s young people t…

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The Jimmy Kimmel canceling is a tipping point for democracy 1:40:08

4d ago1:40:08

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Your favorite psychologists, John Gartner and Harry Segal, review the insidious way the Trump administration is using the Kirk assassination to end freedom of speech. They are joined again by Dr. Vince Greenwood, an expert on psychopathy, who shines a spotlight on Trump’s criminal behavior. Be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts: Our s…

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Epstein Files Frenzy and Court Losses Fuel Trump’s Collapse 1:48:24

7d ago1:48:24

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One of your favorite psychologists, Harry Segal, is back to describe and interpret Trump’s strange behaviors this week, from his tone-deaf response to the Epstein-Maxwell victims to his mysterious medical symptoms. Since John Gartner is on assignment, Ahmed Baba, columnist, journalist, and frequent pundit on cable news, sits in as Harry’s guest co-…

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

6m 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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Trump stumbles over Epstein while aiming at Chicago 2:21:02

15m ago2:21:02

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Your favorite psychologists, John Gartner and Harry Segal, present “this week” in Trump’s power grab encouraged by the Supreme Court. They are joined by the great Andy Borowitz who brings his humor and insight to this dangerous moment in political history. Be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts: Our site Subscribe on iTunes Subscribe o…

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Susan M. Rigdon, "Oscar Lewis in Cuba: La Partida Final" (Berghahn Books, 2024) 1:07:48

4d ago1:07:48

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American anthropologist Oscar Lewis secured permission from Fidel Castro to undertake three years of field research on cultural and economic change in Cuba in the decade after the victory of Castro's M-26 Movement. Oscar Lewis in Cuba: La Partida Final (Berghahn Books, 2024) delves into Lewis' research goals, methods, the training and composition o…

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Chelsi West Ohueri, "Encountering Race in Albania: An Ethnography of the Communist Afterlife" (Cornell UP, 2025) 51:10

6d ago51:10

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Encountering Race in Albania: An Ethnography of the Communist Afterlife (Cornell University Press, 2025) is the first book to interrogate race and racial logics in Albania. Chelsi West Ohueri examines how race is made, remade, produced, and reproduced through constructions of whiteness, blackness, and otherness. She argues that while race is often …

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Deirdre F. Brady, "Literary Coteries and the Irish Women Writers' Club (1933-1958)" (Liverpool UP, 2021) 54:35

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In this interview, Dr. Deirdre Brady discusses her recent book, Literary Coteries and the Irish Women Writers’ Club (1933-1958) (Liverpool UP, 2021). Literary Coteries, which was released in paperback in 2024 is centered around the activities of the Irish Women Writers’ Club, a twentieth-century women’s only coterie that helped to establish a netwo…

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Jovana Diković, "The Laissez-Faire Peasant: Post-Socialist Rural Development in Serbia" (UCL Press, 2025) 55:05

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What if rural progress isn’t about government intervention but about the self-reliance and ingenuity of peasants themselves? The Laissez-Faire Peasant: Post-Socialist Rural Development in Serbia (UCL Press, 2025) subverts conventional wisdom on rural development by shifting the focus from state-led planning to the agency of peasants themselves. Rej…

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Darcie Deangelo et al., "Demilitarizing the Future" (Anthem Press, 2025) 50:25

6d ago50:25

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Demilitarizing the Future (Anthem Press, 2025) draws from art, anthropology, and activism to investigate the entrenchment of militarism in everyday lives and consider novel imaginaries of its dissolution--of peacemaking, community, and shared equitable futures. This book will be published in October of 2025. In this episode, Rebecca Kastleman, Darc…

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Averill Earls, "Love in the Lav: A Social Biography of Same-Sex Desire in Ireland, 1922-1972" (Temple UP, 2025) 33:25

14d ago33:25

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Averill Earls is an associate professor in history at St. Olaf’s College and her research focuses on sexuality and modern Ireland. Her writing has appeared in the Journal of the History of Sexuality, Historical Reflections (in the top-visited issue of the journal to date), Perspectives Magazine, Nursing Clio, and Notches Blog. In 2021 she was award…

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Jessica Urwin, "Contaminated Country: Nuclear Colonialism and Aboriginal Resistance in Australia" (U of Washington Press, 2025) 53:23

15d ago53:23

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Though a nonnuclear state, Australia was embroiled in the military and civilian nuclear energy programs of numerous global powers across the twentieth century. From uranium extraction to nuclear testing, Australia’s lands became sites of imperial exploitation under the guise of national development. The continent was subject to rampant nuclear colo…

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Cold Rush 27:45

11m ago27:45

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In this episode of the Language on the Move Podcast, Ingrid Piller speaks with Sari Pietikainen about her new book Cold Rush (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024). This book is an original study of “Cold Rush,” an accelerated race for the extraction and protection of Arctic natural resources. The Northernmost reach of the planet is caught up in the double dev…

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Ruth E. Toulson, "Necropolitics of the Ordinary: Death and Grieving in Contemporary Singapore" (U Washington Press, 2024) 58:30

17d ago58:30

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Can a state make its people forget the dead? Cemeteries have become sites of acute political contestation in the city-state of Singapore. Confronted with high population density and rapid economic growth, the government has ordered the destruction of all but one burial ground, forcing people to exhume their family members. In Necropolitics of the O…

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Tiffany Earley-Spadoni, "Landscapes of Warfare: Urartu and Assyria in the Ancient Middle East" (UP of Colorado, 2025) 58:49

11d ago58:49

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Landscapes of Warfare: Urartu and Assyria in the Ancient Middle East (University Press of Colorado, 2025) by Dr. Tiffany Earley-Spadoni offers an in-depth exploration of the Urartian empire, which occupied the highlands of present-day Turkey, Armenia, and Iran in the early first millennium BCE. Lesser known than its rival, the Neo-Assyrian empire, …

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Trump faces push-back as he sinks in the polls 1:53:08

23d ago1:53:08

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Your favorite shrinks, John Gartner and Harry Segal, present “this week” in Trump’s cognitive decline, as well as an extended excerpt of Pritzker’s heroic speech pushing back on federal threats to Chicago. While describing this moment in history, the two psychologists offer support and ways to cope with the anxiety Trump’s chaos generates for all o…

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Tackling the Everyday: Race and Nation in Big-Time College Football 58:04

20d ago58:04

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Big-time college football promises prestige, drama, media attention, and money. Yet most athletes in this unpaid, amateur system encounter a different reality, facing dangerous injuries, few pro-career opportunities, a free but devalued college education, and future financial instability. In one of the first ethnographies about Black college footba…

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Maan Barua, "Plantation Worlds" (Duke UP, 2024) 58:49

12d ago58:49

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In Plantation Worlds (Duke UP, 2024), Maan Barua interrogates debates on planetary transformations through the histories and ecologies of plantations. Drawing on long-term research spanning fifteen years, Barua presents a unique ethnography attentive to the lives of both people and elephants amid tea plantations in the Indian state of Assam. In the…

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

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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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K. Ian Shin, "Imperial Stewards: Chinese Art and the Making of America's Pacific Century" (Stanford UP, 2025) 1:07:42

19d ago1:07:42

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This episode, which is co-hosted with Delaney Chieyen Holton, features Dr. K. Ian Shin discussing his recently published book, Imperial Stewards: Chinese Art and the Making of America’s Pacific Century (Standford UP, 2025). Imperial Stewards argues that, beyond aesthetic taste and economics, geopolitics were critical to the United States’ transform…

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Trump’s pathological relationship with Putin is on full display 2:11:09

18d ago2:11:09

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Your favorite psychologists, John Gartner and Harry Segal, review Trump’s disastrous Alaska summit and marvel at how he has reverted to Putin’s absurd Ukraine talking points. They also speak with Richard Wood, eminent clinical psychologist and expert on malignant narcissism, who shares his insights on Trump’s pathology. Be sure to subscribe whereve…

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Bettina Ng′weno, "No Place Like Home in a New City: Anti-Urbanism and Life in Nairobi" (U of California Press, 2025) 53:28

1M ago53:28

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Bettina Ng’weno is Professor of African American and African Studies at the University of California, Davis Nairobi, known as the Green City in the Sun, has taken shape through anti-urban ideologies that insist that the city cannot be home for most residents. Based on decades of experience in rapidly changing Nairobi, No Place Like Home in a New Ci…

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1869, Ep. 172 with Simon Cordery, author of Gilded Age Entrepreneur 29:42

20d ago29:42

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Use promo code 09POD to save 30% on Gilded Age Entrepreneur:https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501783180/gilded-age-entrepreneur/#bookTabs=1Transcript: https://otter.ai/u/G8PULDtfOTPTrJzWmEMxp4wBCM4?utm_source=copy_urlSimon Cordery is Professor and Chair in the History Department at Iowa State University. Simon’s research ranges across t…

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Erased Voices and Unspoken Heritage 41:01

28d ago41:01

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In this episode of the Language on the Move Podcast, Dr Alexandra Grey speaks with Dr Zozan Balci about Zozan’s new book, Erased Voices and Unspoken Heritage: Language, Identity and Belonging in the Lives of Cultural In-betweeners, published in 2025 by Routledge.. The conversation focuses on a study of adults with three languages ‘at play’ in their…

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José Vergara, "All Future Plunges to the Past: James Joyce in Russian Literature" (Cornell UP, 2021) 56:45

25d ago56:45

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All Future Plunges to the Past: James Joyce in Russian Literature (Cornell UP, 2021) explores how Russian writers from the mid-1920s on have read and responded to Joyce's work. Through contextually rich close readings, José Vergara uncovers the many roles Joyce has occupied in Russia over the last century, demonstrating how the writers Yury Olesha,…

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Kate Herrity, "Sound, Order and Survival in Prison: The Rhythms and Routines of HMP Midtown" (Bristol UP, 2024) 1:07:54

27d ago1:07:54

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The soundscape of prison life is that of constant clangs, bangs and jangles. What is the significance of this cacophonous din to those who live and work with it? Sound, Order and Survival in Prison: The Rhythms and Routines of HMP Midtown (Bristol UP, 2024) tells the story of a year spent with a UK prison community, bringing its social world vividl…

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Is Trump becoming “the demented dictator?” 2:10:52

1M ago2:10:52

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Is Trump becoming “the demented dictator”? That’s the question driving the latest episode of Shrinking Trump, as clinical psychologists John Gartner and Harry Segal sit down with Dan Rodricks, the legendary former Baltimore Sun columnist, to unpack Trump’s disastrous press conference where he unveiled a plan to seize control of the D.C. police. Be …

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Kevin P. Donovan, "Money, Value, and the State: Sovereignty and Citizenship in East Africa" (Cambridge UP, 2024) 1:02:03

28d ago1:02:03

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In his book, Money, Value, and the State: Sovereignty and Citizenship in East Africa (Cambridge University Press, 2024), Kevin Donovan argues that East African decolonization was not coterminous with political sovereignty but rather consisted of a longer process of reorganizing how value was legitimately defined, produced, and distributed. It is an…

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Kirin Narayan, "Cave of My Ancestors: Vishwakarma and the Artisans of Ellora" (U Chicago Press, 2024) 1:17:25

1M ago1:17:25

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On the podcast today I am joined by Kirin Narayan, emerita professor at the College of Asia and the Pacific at the Australian National University. Kirin is joining me to talk about her new book, Cave of my Ancestors: Vishwakarma and the Artisans of Ellora published by Chicago University Press in 2024, and in 2025 as an Indian edition by HarperColli…

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Even Republicans can’t miss Trump’s walk on the roof! 2:17:15

2M ago2:17:15

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Your favorite clinical psychologists, John Gartner and Harry Segal, observe how the media is turning again, however slowly, to Trump’s mental decline. They are also joined by James Fishkin, professor at Stanford, whose work on “deliberative democracy” offers an exciting, practical opportunity to address the toxic polarity of our political environme…

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Ayo Wahlberg, "Good Quality: The Routinization of Sperm Banking in China" (U California Press, 2018) 1:12:16

2M ago1:12:16

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From its crude and uneasy beginnings thirty years ago, Chinese sperm banking has become a routine part of China’s pervasive and restrictive reproductive complex. Today, there are sperm banks in each of China’s twenty-two provinces, the biggest of which screen some three thousand to four thousand potential donors each year. Given the estimated one t…

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"Age, Creativity and Culture: Reconsideration of how the Phases of Life Influence Knowledge, Experience, and Creation" 1:08:59

1M ago1:08:59

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“Age, Creativity and Culture: Reconsidering how the Phases of Life Influence Knowledge, Experience, and Creation” by Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera appeared in Nuevos Horizontes in 2024. The article examines age as a dimension of identity, creativity and cognition, and in this episode, Heidi Landecker, Samuel Jay Keyser, and Jenny Wilson consider the importa…

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Lizzie Wade, "Apocalypse: How Catastrophe Transformed Our World and Can Forge New Futures" (Harper, 2025) 1:29:26

2M ago1:29:26

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A richly imagined new view on the great human tradition of apocalypse, from the rise of Homo sapiens to the climate instability of our present, that defies conventional wisdom and long-held stories about our deep past to reveal how cataclysmic events are not irrevocable endings, but transformations. A drought lasts for decades, a disease rips throu…

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Anand Pandian, "Something Between Us: The Everyday Walls of American Life, and How to Take Them Down" (Stanford UP, 2025) 52:22

2M ago52:22

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In 2016, Anand Pandian was alarmed by Donald Trump's harsh attacks on immigrants to the United States, the appeal of that politics of anger and fear. In the years that followed, he crisscrossed the country—from Fargo, North Dakota to Denton, Texas, from southern California to upstate New York—seeking out fellow Americans with markedly different soc…

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Finally, Trump’s grip on the country has begun to slip 1:20:15

2M ago1:20:15

1:20:15

Your favorite clinical psychologists, John Gartner and Harry Segal, observe more signs of Trump’s cognitive decline as well as his loss of support among independents. Is it starting to look like 2020 all over again? Be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts: Our site Subscribe on iTunes Subscribe on Spotify Subscribe on Amazon Music Subsc…

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Camilla Fitzsimons, "Rethinking Feminism in Ireland" (Bloomsbury, 2025) 33:42

2M ago33:42

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Camilla Fitzsimons teaches at Maynooth University and is the author of Community Education and Neoliberalism in 2017 as well as Repealed: Ireland's Unfinished Fight for Reproductive Rights in 2021 which won the American Conference for Irish Studies James S Donnelly Sr book award for History and Social Science – she talked to us in January 2022 abou…

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Klaus Bachmann, "The Genocide in Rwanda in Comparative Perspective: Death and Survival on the Lake Kivu Shore" (Routledge, 2025) 1:22:35

1M ago1:22:35

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The Genocide in Rwanda in Comparative Perspective: Death and Survival on the Lake Kivu Shore (Routledge, 2025) combines social science concepts, history and transitional justice studies to examine the social dynamics, specific actors and ideologies involved in the genocide in Rwanda and examines what makes this genocide a unique case of mass violen…

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Yuki Kato, "Gardens of Hope: Cultivating Food and the Future in a Post-Disaster City" (NYU Press, 2025) 1:07:12

2M ago1:07:12

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Gardens are often spaces of hope, expected to solve many problems in a city including food insecurity and climate resilience. In fact, there has been a historical trend of urban gardening gaining popularity during times of crisis. Gardens of Hope is the story of urban gardening in New Orleans in the decade after Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita…

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Jess Reia, "Urban Music Governance: What Busking Can Teach Us about Data, Policy and Our Cities" (Intellect, 2025) 34:40

2M ago34:40

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What happens when precarious urban cultural laborers take data collection, laws, and policymaking into their own hands? Buskers have been part of our cities for hundreds of years, but they remain invisible to governments and in datasets. From nuisance to public art, this cultural practice can help us understand the politics of data collection, arch…

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Shani Adia Evans, "We Belong Here: Gentrification, White Spacemaking, and a Black Sense of Place" (U Chicago Press, 2025) 32:37

2M ago32:37

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Although Portland, Oregon, is sometimes called “America’s Whitest city,” Black residents who grew up there made it their own. The neighborhoods of Northeast Portland, also called “Albina,” were a haven for and a hub of Black community life. But between 1990 and 2010, Albina changed dramatically—it became majority White. In We Belong Here, sociologi…

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Trump’s cognitive confusion continues! 2:16:15

2M ago2:16:15

2:16:15

Your favorite clinical psychologists, John Gartner and Harry Segal, review Trump’s confusion over the Epstein debacle, sound the alarm about the firing of Colbert and the purchase of CBS, and discuss the implications of sexual perpetrators in power with the ever-inspiring Matthew Ditty, trauma expert, therapist and educator. Be sure to subscribe wh…

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Magdalena Maria Turek, "Buddhist Hermits in Eastern Tibet: Saint-Making and Ascetic Performance" (Routledge, 2025) 1:19:13

2M ago1:19:13

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Magdalena Maria Turek is an independent research scholar. She received her PhD from Humboldt University, Germany, and was a Research Fellow with the Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Program in Buddhist Studies at the American Council of Learned Societies, USA. Her research examines how contemporary reiterations of Tibetan Buddhist orthopraxy, loca…

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1869, Ep. 171 with Angela Douglas, author of Near the Forest, By the Lake 36:35

2M ago36:35

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Use promo code 09POD to save 30% on Near the Forest, By the Lake:https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501780370/near-the-forest-by-the-lake/#bookTabs=0Transcript: https://otter.ai/u/skD79-efbDBWQr9JlorIR0T1RN8?utm_source=copy_urlAngela E. Douglas is Emerita Daljit S. and Elaine Sarkaria Professor of Insect Physiology and Toxicology at Corn…

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

2M ago40:35

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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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From Left Field, MAGA Starts to Crack! 1:46:45

2M ago1:46:45

1:46:45

Your favorite clinical psychologists, John Gartner and Harry Segal, continue to sound the alarm about the judiciary while Trump is caught on camera stealing a soccer medal. Laurie Winer, journalist and historian, returns to talk about the dangerous encroachment of authoritarianism and its resemblance to Germany in the 1930s. Be sure to subscribe wh…

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Nicholas Thomas, "Voyagers: The Settlement of the Pacific" (Apollo, 2020) 56:16

2M ago56:16

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In Voyagers: The Settlement of the Pacific (Apollo, 2020), the distinguished anthropologist Nicholas Thomas tells the story of the peopling of the Pacific. In clear, accessible language Thomas shows us that most Pacific Islanders are in fact 'inter-islanders', or people defined by their movement across the ocean and between islands, rather than 'tr…

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Nicholas Thomas, "Voyagers: The Settlement of the Pacific" (Apollo, 2020) 56:16

2M ago56:16

56:16

In Voyagers: The Settlement of the Pacific (Apollo, 2020), the distinguished anthropologist Nicholas Thomas tells the story of the peopling of the Pacific. In clear, accessible language Thomas shows us that most Pacific Islanders are in fact 'inter-islanders', or people defined by their movement across the ocean and between islands, rather than 'tr…

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Kelly A. Spring, "SPAM: A Global History" (Reaktion, 2025) 32:00

2M ago32:00

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The year 2025 marks the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, a conflict that solidified SPAM’s place in global food culture. Created by Hormel Foods in 1937 to utilize surplus pork shoulder during the Great Depression, SPAM became an essential resource during the Second World War, and helped shape perceptions of American culture. SP…

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Ian Stewart, "The Celts: A Modern History" (Princeton UP, 2025) 1:00:33

2M ago1:00:33

1:00:33

Before the Greeks and Romans, the Celts ruled the ancient world. They sacked Rome, invaded Greece, and conquered much of Europe, from Ireland to Turkey. Celts registered deeply on the classical imagination for a thousand years and were variously described by writers like Caesar and Livy as unruly barbarians, fearless warriors, and gracious hosts. B…