Best J F R Podcasts (2025)

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Raymond J. McKoski, "David Davis, Abraham Lincoln's Favorite Judge" (U Illinois Press, 2025) 57:47

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21h ago57:47

57:47

One of Abraham Lincoln's staunchest and most effective allies, Judge David Davis masterminded the floor fight that gave Lincoln the presidential nomination at the 1860 Republican National Convention. This history-changing event emerged from a long friendship between the two men. It also altered the course of Davis's career, as Lincoln named him to …

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Madison Schramm, "Why Democracies Fight Dictators" (Oxford UP, 2025) 54:36

21h ago54:36

54:36

Over the course of the last century, there has been an outsized incidence of conflict between democracies and personalist regimes—political systems where a single individual has undisputed executive power and prominence. In most cases, it has been the democratic side that has chosen to employ military force. Why Democracies Fight Dictators (Oxford …

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Michael Fernandez and Amauri Serrano, "Streaming Video Collection Development and Management" (Bloomsbury Libraries Unlimited, 2025) 47:03

19h ago47:03

47:03

Streaming video is not new to the library environment, but recent years have seen an exponential growth in the number of platforms and titles available for streaming. For libraries, this has meant an increasingly complex acquisitions landscape, with more vendors occupying the marketplace and larger portions of the budget dedicated to streaming. Use…

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Deepa Das Acevedo, "The War on Tenure" (Cambridge UP, 2025) 1:02:47

24h ago1:02:47

1:02:47

As academia increasingly comes under attack in the United States, The War on Tenure (Cambridge UP, 2025) steps in to demystify what professors do and to explain the importance of tenure for their work. Deepa Das Acevedo takes readers on a backstage tour of tenure-stream academia to reveal hidden dynamics and obstacles. She challenges the common bel…

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Vincent Pak, "Queer Correctives: Discursive Neo-homophobia, Sexuality and Christianity in Singapore" (Bloomsbury, 2025) 53:28

24h ago53:28

53:28

Queer Correctives: Discursive Neo-homophobia, Sexuality and Christianity in Singapore (Bloomsbury Academic, 2025) explores Christian discourses of sex and sexuality in Singapore to argue that metanoia, the theological concept of spiritual transformation, can be read as a form of neo-homophobia that coaxes change in the queer individual. In Singapor…

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Jamal J. Elias, "After Rumi: The Mevlevis and Their World" (Harvard UP, 2025) 1:02:52

23h ago1:02:52

1:02:52

Jamal J. Elias' new book After Rumi: The Mevlevis & Their World (Harvard UP, 2025) takes us on a historical journey through the development of the Mevlevi community after Jalaluddin Rumi’s passing in 1273. He frames the Mevlevis as an “emotional community” that is anchored in affective engagements with Rumi and his Masnavi. The book is organized ar…

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Daniel K. Sodickson, "The Future of Seeing: How Imaging is Changing the World" (Columbia UP, 2025) 1:09:43

24h ago1:09:43

1:09:43

Over the centuries, we have learned to peer into what was once invisible. Imaging devices like cameras, telescopes, microscopes, and MRI machines map the world around, beyond, and within us in ways the naked eye could never see. In so doing, these technologies have transformed our understanding of our place in the universe and our conception of our…

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

16h 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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Jürgen Schaflechner, "Hinglaj Devi: Identity, Change, and Solidification at a Hindu Temple in Pakistan" (Oxford UP, 2018) 1:26:58

23h ago1:26:58

1:26:58

About two hundred kilometers west of the city of Karachi, in the desert of Baluchistan, Pakistan, sits the shrine of the Hindu Goddess Hinglaj. Despite the temple's ancient Hindu and Muslim history, an annual festival at Hinglaj has only been established within the last three decades, in part because of the construction of the Makran Coastal Highwa…

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Emília Barna, "Working in Music on the Semi-Periphery: Local Cultural Production and Global Capitalism" (CEU Press, 2025) 45:27

18h ago45:27

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In this episode, host Andrea Talabér (CEU Press) sat down with Emília Barna to discuss her new book, Working in Music on the Semiperiphery: Local Cultural Production and Global Capitalism (CEU Press, 2025). We talked about the changes and continuities that the Hungarian music industry underwent from the communist to the post-communist era, the impa…

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Tales to Terrify 714 Laila Amado & Akis Linardos 44:37

25m ago44:37

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Welcome to episode 714. We have two tales for you this week, about guardian eldritch horrors and the risks of messing with time. COMING UP Good Evening: Halloween Flash Contest and Thank-yous: 00:01:06 [Trigger] Laila Amado’s Heaven is Experiencing Staffing Shortages and Somehow This is My Problem as read by James Barnett: 00:04:00 Akis Linardos’ R…

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1,000 Episodes with Miranda Melcher 36:51

8m ago36:51

36:51

This episode marks a milestone for NBN host Dr. Miranda Melcher - 1,000 NBN interviews! This episode is a little different because she sits in the guest chair and is interviewed by one of the NBN editors, Jessie Cohen, about this wonderful accomplishment. In this fun interview, Miranda shares how she became an NBN host, how she approaches choosing …

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Luis L. Schenoni, "Bringing War Back In: Victory, Defeat, and the State in Nineteenth-Century Latin America" (Cambridge UP, 2025) 1:01:30

2d ago1:01:30

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Bringing War Back In: Victory, Defeat, and the State in Nineteenth-Century Latin America (Cambridge UP, 2025) provides a fresh theory connecting war and state formation that incorporates the contingency of warfare and the effects of war outcomes in the long run. The book demonstrates that international wars in nineteenth-century Latin America trigg…

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Erin M.B. O'Halloran, "East of Empire: Egypt, India, and the World Between the Wars" (Stanford UP, 2025) 57:35

1d ago57:35

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Between the First and Second World Wars, activists across the British Empire began to think about what their homes might look like as independent nations, rather than colonies subject to the control of London. Sometimes, these thinkers found refuge and common cause in others elsewhere in the Empire–such as between India and Egypt, , as Erin O’Hallo…

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157 Mangrum's Comical Computation (JP) 46:23

2d ago46:23

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When does comedy become more than a laugh? Ben Mangrum of MIT joins RtB to discuss his new book, The Comedy of Computation: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Obsolescence (Stanford UP, 2025), which in some ways is organized around “the intriguing idea that human knowledge work is our definitive feature and yet the machines we are ourselve…

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Uncanny E.T.A. Hoffmann with Peter Wortsman 1:30:43

2d ago1:30:43

1:30:43

Step into the unsettling world of E.T.A. Hoffmann with translator Peter Wortsman to explore “The Sandman”—a tale that haunted Freud enough to spark his famous psychoanalytic analysis of “The Uncanny,” examining familiar things that unsettle and disturb us for no clear reason. What makes this bizarre story so deeply disturbing, even today? And how d…

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Leading Toward Liberation: How to Build Cultures of Thriving in Higher Education 52:26

8m ago52:26

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In Leading Toward Liberation: How to Build Cultures of Thriving in Higher Education (JHU Press, 2025), Dr. Annmarie Caño reimagines academic leadership as a practice rooted in liberation and equity. Drawing on her experiences as a Latina, first-generation college student, clinical psychologist, and higher education administrator, Caño shows how lea…

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Eric T. Jennings, "Vanilla: The History of an Extraordinary Bean" (Yale UP, 2025) 51:51

2d ago51:51

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Vanilla is one of the most expensive of flavorings—so valuable that it was smuggled or stolen by pirates in the early days—and yet it is everywhere. It is a key ingredient in dishes ranging from crème brûlée to Japanese purin. It is the quintessential ice cream flavor in the United States. In Vanilla: The History of an Extraordinary Bean (Yale UP, …

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Clara A. B. Joseph, "India's Non-violent Freedom Struggle: The Thomas Christians (1599-1799)" (Routledge, 2023) 37:46

1d ago37:46

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India's Nonviolent Freedom Struggle focuses on the Thomas Christians, a group of Christians in South India who waged a nonviolent struggle against European colonization during the politically volatile period of 1599-1799. India's Non-violent Freedom Struggle: The Thomas Christians (1599-1799) (Routledge, 2023) has three related objectives and uniqu…

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Kathleen B. Casey, "The Things She Carried: A Cultural History of the Purse in America" (Oxford UP, 2025) 52:31

1d ago52:31

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Kathleen Casey joins Jana Byars to talk about The Things She Carried: A Cultural History of the Purse in America (Oxford UP, 2025). Purses and bags have always been much more than a fashion accessory. For generations of Americans, the purse has been an essential and highly adaptable object, used to achieve a host of social, cultural, and political …

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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

2d 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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Carolina Panthers have a long way to go to fix their franchise 28:46

43m ago28:46

28:46

Dennis Cox & Chris Lea discuss how the Carolina Panthers waiving former draft pick DJ Johnson, the lack of quality players from recent draft classes, and there's clearly a disconnect between head coach Dave Canales and defensive coordinator Ejiro Evero. Panthers Playbook is sponsored by Wake Orthopedics.…

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Jonah Kagen | That Interview 12:17

5h ago12:17

12:17

Join us this week as we sit down with singer-songwriter Jonah Kagen! Jonah takes us behind the scenes of his latest album, "Sunflowers and Leather," revealing the unconventional origin of his music: living for a year in an Airstream trailer where he wrote, recorded, and produced the entire project. Hear the story of how this unique, solitary experi…

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Eibhear Walshe and Eleanor Fitzsimons, "Speranza: Poems by Jane Wilde" (Liverpool UP, 2025) 37:57

3d ago37:57

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Speranza: Poems by Jane Wilde (Liverpool UP, 2025) by Dr. Eibhear Walshe and Dr. Eleanor Fitzsimons is the first contemporary edition of the poetry of Jane Wilde, née Elgee, who also wrote as Speranza. Speranza was, in her time, renowned worldwide, with essays, poetry and translated work published in Ireland, England, America and beyond. She was a …

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Roddy Bottum, "The Royal We" (Akashic Books, 2025) 51:13

3d ago51:13

51:13

The Royal We (Akashic Books, 2025) is a poetic survey of a time set in a magical city that once was and is no more. It is a memoir written by Roddy Bottum, a musician and artist, that documents through prose his coming of age and out of the closet in 1980s San Francisco, a charged era of bicycle messengers, punk rock, street witches, wheatgrass, an…

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Michael Rowe, "Researching Street-Level Bureaucracy: Bringing Out the Interpretive Dimensions" (Routledge, 2024) 40:09

3d ago40:09

40:09

Researching Street-level Bureaucracy: Bringing Out the Interpretive Dimensions (Routledge, 2024) is the first among a number of new titles in the Routledge Series on Interpretive Methods that we’ll be featuring on New Books in Interpretive Political and Social Science. In it, Mike Rowe discusses the continued relevance of the idea of street level b…

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Robert F. Williams, "The Airborne Mafia: The Paratroopers Who Shaped America's Cold War Army" (Cornell UP, 2025) 41:21

3d ago41:21

41:21

The Airborne Mafia: The Paratroopers Who Shaped America's Cold War Army (Cornell UP, 2025) explores how a small group of World War II airborne officers took control of the US Army after World War II. This powerful cadre cemented a unique airborne culture that had an unprecedented impact on the Cold War US Army and beyond. Robert F. Williams reveals…

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Sasha Davis, "Replace the State: How to Change the World When Elections and Protests Fail" (U Minnesota Press, 2025) 28:30

3d ago28:30

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A practical call to action against oppression. Across the globe, millions of people have participated in protests and marches, donated to political groups, or lobbied their representatives with the aim of creating lasting social change, overturning repressive laws, or limiting environmental destruction. Yet very little seems to improve for those af…

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Kathryn Dyt, "The Nature of Kingship: The Weather-World in Nineteenth-Century Vietnam" (U Hawaii Press, 2025) 40:30

3d ago40:30

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When we think about the way that Southeast Asian rulers governed their kingdoms, we usually think of the relationship between the rulers and the people. But as Katheryn Dyt shows in her new book, The Nature of Kingship: The Weather-World in Nineteenth-Century Vietnam (University of Hawaii Press, 2025), royal governance in the Kingdom of Vietnam dep…