Best Jacob Joyce Podcasts (2025)

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Michael Jabara Carley, "Stalin's Great Game: War and Neutrality, 1939-1941" (U Toronto Press, 2025) 1:29:19

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The period from September 1939 to early 1942 was crucial for Soviet foreign policy and coincided with the early stages of the Second World War, including the Great Patriotic War. In Stalin's Great Game, Michael Jabara Carley unpacks the complexities of Soviet diplomacy during this time, addressing key issues such as the Soviet-Finnish Winter War, S…

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Kathleen Kaufman, "The Entirely True Story of the Fantastical Mesmerist Nora Grey" (Kensington Books, 2025) 33:58

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This fascinating novel—dual-time historical with a fantastical overlay, based in part on the life of the author’s great-grandfather, a nineteenth-century charlatan—follows the career of a young Scotswoman named Nairna Liath. When we meet her in 1900, Nora, sixteen years old, travels the Scottish countryside at the insistence of her father, Tavish, …

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Petter Törnberg and Justus Uitermark, "Seeing Like a Platform: An Inquiry into the Condition of Digital Modernity" (Taylor & Francis, 2025) 58:40

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'Seeing Like a Platform: An Inquiry into the Condition of Digital Modernity (Taylor & Francis, 2025)' by Petter Törnberg & Justus Uitermark In my conversation with Petter Törnberg about Seeing Like a Platform, we kept returning to a simple but unsettling point: platforms don't just carry our messages or connect us to information. They've created an…

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Richard Mainwaring, "What the Ear Hears (And Doesn't): Inside the Extraordinary Everyday World of Frequency" (Sourcebooks, 2022) 1:10:37

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What do the world's loneliest whale, a black hole, and twenty-three people doing Tae Bo all have in common? In 2011, a skyscraper in South Korea began to shake uncontrollably without warning and was immediately evacuated. Was it an earthquake? An attack? No one seemed quite sure. The actual cause emerged later and is utterly fascinating: Twenty-thr…

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Edward Berenson, "Perfect Communities: Levitt, Levittown, and the Dream of White Suburbia" (Yale UP, 2025) 1:03:08

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The rise and fall of William J. Levitt, the man who made the suburban house a mass commodity. Two material artifacts defined the middle-class American lifestyle in the mid-twentieth century: the automobile, which brought gas stations, highways, commercial strips, and sprawl; and the single-family suburban home, the repository of many families’ long…

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Alisha Mughal, "It Can’t Rain All the Time: The Crow" (ECW Press, 2025) 44:21

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Alisha Mughal's It Can’t Rain All the Time: The Crow (ECW Press, 2025) weaves memoir with film criticism in an effort to pin down The Crow’s cultural resonance. A passionate analysis of the ill-fated 1994 film starring the late Brandon Lee and its long-lasting influence on action movies, cinematic grief, and emotional masculinity Released in 1994, …

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Garrett M. Graff, "When the Sea Came Alive: An Oral History of D-Day" (Simon and Schuster, 2025) 54:18

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June 6, 1944—known to us all as D-Day—is one of history’s greatest and most unbelievable military triumphs. The surprise sunrise landing of more than 150,000 Allied troops on the beaches of occupied northern France is one of the most consequential days of the 20th century. Now, Pulitzer Prize finalist Garrett M. Graff, historian and author of The O…

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Hannah Star Rogers, "Art, Science, and the Politics of Knowledge (MIT Press, 2022) 1:01:41

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'Art, Science, and the Politics of Knowledge (MIT Press, 2022)' by Hannah Star Rogers When I sat down with Hannah Star Rogers to discuss her new book Art, Science, and the Politics of Knowledge, I found myself nodding along to a refreshingly obvious yet somehow radical proposition: why do we insist on keeping art and science in separate corners? Ro…

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Ned Richardson-Little, "The German Democratic Republic: The Rise and Fall of a Cold War State" (Bloomsbury, 2025) 53:29

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The German Democratic Republic has come to stand as a symbol of communist tyranny, a source of Cold War nostalgia and socialist kitsch, and a failed alternative to the worst excesses of 21st century capitalism. In this book, Ned Richardson-Little delves into the central contradictions of the GDR state: This book illustrates the fault lines of GDR s…

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Philip Carr-Gomm, "A Brief History of Nakedness" (Reaktion, 2010) 32:12

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Philip Carr-Gomm joins Jana Byars to talk about A Brief History of Nakedness (Reaktion, 2010) on the occasion of its newest paperback edition. From the naked sages of India to modern-day witches and Christian nudists, from Lady Godiva to Lady Gaga, Carr-Comm writes a survey of the touching, sometimes tragic, and often bizarre story of our relations…

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Raffale Bedarida, "Corrado Cagli: Transatlantic Bridges (1938-1947" (Centro Primo Levi, 2023) 1:52:42

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As a Jewish and openly gay artist, Cagli became the target of virulent attacks, especially after Italy promulgated its racial laws in 1938. In response to these hostile conditions, Cagli chose to leave his homeland and seek refuge in the United States. In America, he became an influential figure within the New York émigré artistic scene. He found c…

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Edward Luce, "Zbig: The Life of Zbigniew Brzezinski, America's Great Power Prophet" (Simon and Schuster, 2025) 43:25

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Zbigniew Brzezinski was a key architect of the Soviet Union’s demise, which ended the Cold War. A child of Warsaw—the heart of central Europe’s bloodlands—Brzezinski turned his fierce resentment at his homeland’s razing by Nazi Germany and the Red Army into a lifelong quest for liberty. Born the year that Joseph Stalin consolidated power, and dying…

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Every Purchase Matters: How Fair Trade Farmers, Companies, and Consumers are Changing the World 57:38

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We all have the power to change the world through the products we buy. This simple premise has driven the growth of the conscious consumer movement for decades. Indeed, what started with a handful of niche sustainability brands has exploded into the mainstream with labels like Organic, Non-GMO, and Fair Trade Certified now adorning products in majo…

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Joyce Hinnefeld, "The Dime Museum" (Unbridled Books, 2025) 28:58

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The Dime Museum (Unbridled Books, 2025) is a novel spanning several generations, told in stories that begin in the early 1900s and end during the 2020 pandemic. Set in Chicago, Reading and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Europe, the linked stories tell an overall tale of how the rich and the poor survive in a challenging modern world. Charlie, who’…

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Domale Dube, "Ogoni Women's Activism: The Transnational Struggle for Justice" (University of Illinois Press, 2025) 33:48

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A Glimpse of Ogoni Women’s Activism: The Transnational Struggle for Justice (University of Illinois Press, 2025) with Mariam Olugbodi “Ogoni Women’s Activism” is a democratic feminist movement, and a nonviolent struggle against oil spills and environmental destruction in the Niger-Delta Nigeria in the 90s. The Federation of Ogoni Women Activists (…

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

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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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Ara Sarafian et al., "Microhistories in Armenian Studies" (Cal State Fresno Press, 2025) 1:00:59

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The articles appearing in this volume were presented at a conference entitled “Microhistories in Armenian Studies” organized by the Armenian Studies Program of California State University, Fresno, on September 22-23, 2023. They have since been edited and appear here in a single volume. The present study focuses on Armenian studies from a conceptual…

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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

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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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Matthew R. Sparks and Olivia Sizemore, "Haint Country: Dark Folktales from the Hills and Hollers" (UP of Kentucky, 2024) 42:20

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Matthew Sparks and Oliva Sizemore join Jana Byars for a fun, chilling, and thoughtful discussion about about Haint Country: Dark Tales from the Hills and Hollers (University Press of Kentucky, 2024). The hills of the Appalachia region hold secrets—dark, deep, varied, and mysterious. These secrets are often told in the form of eerie, thrilling, and …

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Iban Heritage and Culture in Malaysia 20:04

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Every June, there is a significant cultural event in Malaysia, which is called the Gawai Dayak Festival, highly celebrated to mark the end of the harvest season and give thanks to the Iban agricultural God, Raja Simpulang Gana. In this episode of the Nordic Asia Podcast, Prof. Julie Yu-Wen Chen from the University of Helsinki talks to Dr. Gregory a…

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

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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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Aviva Guttmann, "Operation Wrath of God: The Secret History of European Intelligence and Mossad's Assassination Campaign" (Cambridge UP, 2025) 50:09

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In this unprecedented history of intelligence cooperation during the Cold War, Aviva Guttmann uncovers the key role of European intelligence agencies in facilitating Mossad's Operation Wrath of God; a campaign of assassination against Black September terrorists. She reveals how, in the aftermath of the 1972 Munich Olympics Massacre, Palestinians su…

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Bryon L. Garner, "Black Veteranality: Military Service and the Illusion of Inclusive Patriotism" (Routledge, 2025) 56:32

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Military service in the United States has long been associated with patriotism. But for Black veterans, this association with patriotism, love for country, is complicated by their experiences with racism and discrimination in the US and both civilians and as members of the military. In Black Veteranality: Military Service and the Illusion of Inclus…

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Vijay Selvam, "Principles of Bitcoin: Technology, Economics, Politics, and Philosophy" (Columbia UP, 2025) 58:41

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Principles of Bitcoin presents a holistic, first-principles-based framework for understanding one of the most misunderstood inventions of our time. By stripping away the hype, jargon, and superficial analysis that often surrounds the crypto industry, this book uncovers the true ingenuity behind Satoshi Nakamoto’s creation—and its profound implicati…

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Ryan Griffiths, "The Disunited States: Threats of Secession in Red and Blue America and Why They Won't Work" (Oxford UP, 2025) 1:03:52

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Is the breakup of an increasingly polarized America into separate red and blue countries even possible? There is a growing interest in American secession. In February 2023, Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeted that "We need a national divorce...We need to separate by red states and blue states." Recent movements like Yes California have called for a nati…

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Horror and Humanism in "28 Years Later" 1:08:32

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We break down the themes and ideas in 28 Years Later, with a particular focus on the politics of this Danny Boyle / Alex Garland sequel to 28 Days Later. We react to the humanitarianism of Dr. Kelson, the role of the islands within the movie, and analyze the visions of family, fatherhood, and masculinity presented. We explain the controversial endi…

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Tatiana Bur, "Technologies of the Marvellous in Ancient Greek Religion" (Cambridge UP, 2025) 55:56

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Tatiana Bur, Technologies of the Marvellous in Ancient Greek Religion (Cambridge UP, 2025) This open-access book investigates the ways that technological, and especially mechanical, strategies were integrated into ancient Greek religion. By analysing a range of evidence, from the tragic use of the deus ex machina to Hellenistic epigrams to ancient …

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Alan M. Wald, "Bohemian Bolsheviks: Dispatches from the Culture and History of the Left" (Brill, 2025) 1:40:37

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For several decades now, Alan Wald has been thoroughly documenting the history of the literature and cultural output of the American left. While his numerous books and essays cover a lot of territory, much of his work is united by an interest in commitment, particularly when it comes to radical politics. What does it mean to commit ones life to a r…

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Jacob F. H. Smith, "Waves of Discontent: Electoral Volatility, Public Policymaking, and the Health of American Democracy" (U Michigan Press, 2025) 22:05

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After a period of relative calm in congressional elections prior to 2006, America has experienced a series of highly competitive, volatile national elections. Since then, at least one of the US House, US Senate, and presidency has flipped party control--often with a large House or Senate seat swing--with the exception of the 2012 election. In Waves…