Best Strange Pathways Podcasts (2025)

1
Luke Jones and Nestor take DeCosta and Harbaugh to task for lying about Lamar on injury report 41:10

Play Pause

7m ago41:10

41:10

The fiasco over putting Lamar Jackson as a "full" participant on a Friday afternoon injury report when he ran scout team and they knew he wasn't going to start on Sunday has just begun for John Harbaugh and the Baltimore Ravens. His "excuse" was far less than believable as Luke Jones and Nestor also take general manager Eric DeCosta to task for pus…

1
Janice Ross "The Choreography of Environments: How the Anna and Lawrence Halprin Home Transformed Contemporary Dance and Urban Design" (Oxford UP, 2025) 56:41

7h ago56:41

56:41

The Choreography of Environments: How the Anna and Lawrence Halprin Home Transformed Contemporary Dance and Urban Design (Oxford UP, 2025) explores how objects and the domestic spaces seep into the aesthetic consciousness of movement-based artists, like dancers and urban designers, significantly shaping their approach to movement invention and chor…

1
Democracy After Illiberalism: A Warning from Poland 55:46

34m ago55:46

55:46

Why are illiberal governments able to retain support? How are they defeated at election time? And how do (and should) governments driven by a desire to undo illiberalism proceed? For all interested in elections, democracy, accountability and representation Poland provides much food for thought. We have seen two important elections in the country in…

1
Australia‘s National Indigenous Languages Survey 41:30

34m ago41:30

41:30

In this episode of the Language on the Move Podcast, Dr Alexandra Grey speaks with Zoe Avery, a Worimi woman and a Research Officer at the Centre for Australian Languages within the Australian Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS). Zoe and her teammates are preparing the upcoming 4th National Indigenous Languages Sur…

1
Joshua Clark Davis, "Police Against the Movement: The Sabotage of the Civil Rights Struggle and the Activists Who Fought Back" (Princeton UP, 2025) 1:25:36

5h ago1:25:36

1:25:36

Police Against the Movement: The Sabotage of the Civil Rights Struggle and the Activists Who Fought Back (Princeton UP, 2025) shatters one of the most pernicious myths about the 1960s: thast the civil rights movement endured police violence without fighting it. Instead, as Joshua Clark Davis shows, activists from the Congress of Racial Equality and…

1
Diane Ravitch, "An Education: How I Changed My Mind About Schools and Almost Everything Else" (Columbia UP, 2025) 1:02:58

5h ago1:02:58

1:02:58

For many years, Diane Ravitch was among the country’s leading conservative thinkers on education. The cure for what ailed the school system was clear, she believed: high-stakes standardized testing, national standards, accountability, competition, charters, and vouchers. Then Ravitch saw what happened when these ideas were put into practice and rec…

1
Brian Potter, "The Origins of Efficiency" (Stripe Press, 2025) 51:26

6h ago51:26

51:26

Efficiency is the engine that powers human civilization. It's the reason rates of famine have fallen precipitously, literacy has risen, and humans are living longer, healthier lives compared to preindustrial times. But where do improvements in production efficiency come from? In The Origins of Efficiency (Stripe Press, 2025), Brian Potter argues th…

1
Edmond Smith, "Ruthless: A New History of Britain’s Rise to Wealth and Power, 1660-1800" (Yale UP, 2025) 57:57

6h ago57:57

57:57

Was Britain’s industrial revolution the result of its machines, which produced goods with miraculous efficiency? Was it the country’s natural abundance, which provided coal for its engines, ores for its furnaces and food for its labourers? Or was it Britain’s colonies, where a brutalized enslaved workforce produced cotton for its factories? In Ruth…

1
Kubrick’s Worlds: Power, Paranoia, and the Politics of the Human Condition 1:30:09

5h ago1:30:09

1:30:09

In this episode of International Horizons, Interim Director Eli Karetny speaks with film scholar Nathan Abrams about the enduring relevance of Stanley Kubrick and what his work can teach us about our current era. From the nuclear absurdities of Dr. Strangelove to the cosmic rebirth of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Kubrick’s films expose the fragile line b…

1
Democratic Dialogues: Pathways of Democratic Backsliding, Resistance, and (Partial) Recoveries 42:09

6h ago42:09

42:09

A podcast from Cornell University’s Brooks School of Public Policy Center on Global Democracy About the Podcast Each week, co-hosts Rachel Beatty Riedl and Esam Boraey bring together leading scholars, policymakers, and practitioners to explore the challenges and possibilities facing democracy around the world. Produced by Cornell’s Center on Global…

1
Sadiqa de Meijer, "In the Field" (Palimpsest Press, 2025) 41:13

34m ago41:13

41:13

In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Governor General Award-winning author Sadiqa de Meijer about her new essay collection, In the Field (Palimpsest Press, 2025). In The Field, Sadiqa de Meijer's follow up to the Governor General's Award winning alfabet/alphabet, brings us essays that move searchingly through their central questions…

1
Luke Jones and Nestor recap Ravens big win over Bears with Snoop and grit 37:19

1h ago37:19

37:19

It's not easy being the backup quarterback in Baltimore. Tyler "Snoop" Huntley once again took the ball and led the Ravens to an impressive 30-14 win over the Chicago Bears on Sunday afternoon. Luke Jones and Nestor recap a gritty effort and a short turnaround for the flock in the hopes that Lamar Jackson will return in Miami on Thursday night. The…

1
The Trip 23:20

5h ago23:20

23:20

My Dinner with Andre (1981) is a film that uses the simple premise of two men sharing a meal as a vehicle for exploration of how we should live our lives. It asks fundamental questions about happiness and self-fulfillment that it doesn't wholly answer. The Trip (2010) uses the same premise as a way to dramatize two men earnestly debating who does t…

1
Garrett Hardin’s Tragic Environmentalism 1:15:27

6h ago1:15:27

1:15:27

An ecologist in California claimed that the iron laws of nature locked humanity into destroying our environment. This meant that we must take drastic measures to rein in unfettered capitalism and the American habit of overconsumption, lest we deplete our common resources. That argument made Garrett Hardin one of the most influential and celebrated …

1
Kenneth G. Appold, "Luther and the Peasants: Religion, Ritual, and the Revolt Of 1525" (Oxford UP, 2025) 49:22

1d ago49:22

49:22

Kenneth G. Appold joins Jana Byars to talk about his new book, Luther and the Peasants: Religion, Ritual, and the Revolt of 1525 (Oxford UP, 2025). The German Peasants' Revolts of 1525 were a defining moment both for the Protestant Reformation and the history of European culture. But while the conflicts are well-studied, they are typically analyzed…

1
Amanda Laury Kleintop, "Counting the Cost of Freedom: The Fight Over Compensated Emancipation After the Civil War" (UNC Press, 2025) 1:00:00

1d ago1:00:00

1:00:00

During the Civil War, the U.S. federal government abolished slavery without reimbursing enslavers, diminishing the white South’s wealth by nearly 50 percent. After the Confederacy’s defeat, white Southerners demanded federal compensation for the financial value of formerly enslaved people and fought for other policies that would recognize abolition…

1
A Song for the Horses: Musical Heritage for More-than-Human Futures in Mongolia 1:03:34

1d ago1:03:34

1:03:34

As permafrost in Siberia continues to melt and the steppe in the Gobi turns to desert, people in Mongolia are faced with overlapping climate crises. Some nomadic herders describe climate change as the end of a world. They are quick to add that the world has ended before for Indigenous people in North Asia, as waves of colonialism have left the step…

1
Jeremy Swist, "Julian Augustus: Platonism, Myth and the Refounding of Rome" (Oxford UP, 2025) 1:29:40

1d ago1:29:40

1:29:40

The Roman emperor Julian (r. 361-363 CE) was a man of action and of letters, which he employed in an effort to return the Empire to the light of the pagan gods, and reverse the Christianization of the empire advanced by his uncle Constantine and the sons of Constantine. This enterprise was inspired and guided by his conversion to the Neoplatonic ph…

1
Daniel B. Rood, "The Reinvention of Atlantic Slavery: Technology, Labor, Race, and Capitalism in the Greater Caribbean" (Oxford UP, 2020) 41:09

1d ago41:09

41:09

The period of the "second slavery" was marked by geographic expansion of zones of slavery into the Upper US South, Cuba, and Brazil and chronological expansion into the industrial age. As The Reinvention of Atlantic Slavery: Technology, Labor, Race, and Capitalism in the Greater Caribbean (Oxford UP, 2020) shows, ambitious planters throughout the G…

1
Jennifer Barry, "Gender Violence in Late Antiquity: Male Fantasies and the Christian Imagination" (U California Press, 2025) 32:14

1d ago32:14

32:14

Gender Violence in Late Antiquity: Male Fantasies and the Christian Imagination (University of California Press, 2025) by Dr. Jennifer Barry confronts the violent ideological frameworks underpinning the early Christian imagination, arguing that gender-based violence is not peripheral but is fundamental to understanding early Christian history. By a…

1
Kate Epstein on How Twentieth-Century Technology Theft Built the National-Security State" (U Chicago Press, 2024) 1:33:30

1d ago1:33:30

1:33:30

In this episode I sit down with Kate Epstein, an associate professor of history at Rutgers University-Camden, as she details her research on the intersection of defense contracting, intellectual property, and government secrecy in Great Britain and the United States. We talk about her process in researching and writing her latest book Analog Superp…

1
Anthony Tucker-Jones, "The Secret War: Spies, Lies and the Art of Deception in World War II" (Sirius, 2025) 1:41:47

1d ago1:41:47

1:41:47

Written by British former intelligence officer, Anthony Tucker-Jones, this fascinating, illustrated guide takes a deep dive into the secret operations which shaped World War II. Most of the great military campaigns and breakthroughs of World War II would not have been successful without the efforts of teams of people working unsung and undercover. …

1
Damian O’Doherty tells Nestor about the new independence of his social influence and AI insights 30:22

23h ago30:22

30:22

It's been a while since longtime political insider Damian O'Doherty has returned to the Maryland Crab Cake Tour but he brings the changes in his public affairs business and the sweeping changing in Trump's America with foreign money, big business, the destruction of government pillars and AI moving at the speed of humanity. Always a spirited debate…

1
Sarah Perl of GBMC takes Nestor on difficult journey of child maltreatment and education awareness 16:39

1d ago16:39

16:39

Discussing child abuse and the mistreatment of children is never easy but our partners at GBMC want our community to know that help is a reach away. Sarah Perl of GBMC takes Nestor on the difficult journey of child maltreatment and education awareness to discuss the unspeakable. We'll also introduce you to beautiful Olivia, who is a making a differ…

1
Super agent Leigh Steinberg returns with quarterback observations and Dodgers love from Los Angeles 26:38

1d ago26:38

26:38

We always enjoy our chats with NFL super agent Leigh Steinberg about quarterbacks, contracts and league issues but when it's World Series time in Los Angeles, the lead story is always his first love of the Dodgers and summer nights at Chavez Ravine. Don't worry: we talk Lamar and Mahomes, too! The post Super agent Leigh Steinberg returns with quart…

1
Patrick Parr, "Malcolm Before X" (U Massachusetts Press, 2024) 26:16

1d ago26:16

26:16

Drawing upon interviews, correspondence, and nearly 2000 pages of never-before-used prison records, Malcolm Before X is the definitive examination of the prison years of civil rights icon Malcolm X. The book was a Kirkus Nonfiction Book of the Year for 2024, a Spectator best book of the year, and a finalist for the 2025 ASALH book prize. In Februar…

1
Roger Moorhouse, "Wolfpack: Hitler’s U-Boat War 1939-45" (HarperCollins, 2025) 1:05:15

2d ago1:05:15

1:05:15

Winston Churchill famously remarked that the threat of the German U-Boats was the only thing that had “really frightened” him during World War Two. The U-Boats certainly claimed a bitter harvest among Allied shipping: nearly 3,000 ships were sunk, for a total tonnage of over 14 million tonnes, nearly 70% of Allied shipping losses in all theatres of…

1
Javier Wallace, "Basketball Trafficking: Stolen Black Panamanian Dreams" (Duke UP, 2025) 1:06:41

2d ago1:06:41

1:06:41

Every year, hundreds of international student athletes arrive in the U.S. chasing their basketball dreams — many on F-1 student visas. But for some their journey turns into exploitation. Basketball Trafficking: Stolen Black Panamanian Dreams (Duke University Press, 2025) uncovers how dreams are sold, manipulated, and in some cases stolen — especial…

1
Mark Mazower, "On Antisemitism: A Word in History" (Penguin Press, 2025) 45:58

2d ago45:58

45:58

What do we mean when we talk about antisemitism? A thoughtful, vital new intervention from the award-winning historian. For most of history, antisemitism has been understood as a menace from Europe’s political Right, the province of blood-and-soil ethno-nativists who built on Christendom’s long-standing suspicion of its Jewish population and infuse…