Best Yale University Press Podcasts (2025)

Since the Reagan era, conservatives in the United States have championed cutting taxes, especially for wealthy individuals and corporations, as the best way to achieve economic prosperity. In his new book, Pay Up!: Conservative Myths about Tax Cuts for the Rich (Cambridge UP, 2025) John L. Campbell shows that while these claims are highly influenti…

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Thea Riofrancos, "Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism" (W.W. Norton, 2025) 1:25:41

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Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism (W.W. Norton, 2025) is an in-depth analysis into the growing industry of green technologies and the environmental, social, and political consequences of the mining it requires. In the fight against climate change, lithium's role in reducing emissions by powering green economies is a mixed blessing. Draw…

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Mary E. Hicks, "Captive Cosmopolitans: Black Mariners and the World of South Atlantic Slavery" (Omohundro Institute and UNC Press, 2025) 1:06:43

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From the bustling ports of Lisbon to the coastal inlets of the Bight of Benin to the vibrant waterways of Bahia, Black mariners were integral to every space of the commercial South Atlantic. Navigating this kaleidoscopic world required a remarkable cosmopolitanism--the chameleonlike ability to adapt to new surroundings by developing sophisticated m…

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#149: Incarnate Word Men's Basketball Coach Shane Heirman 25:58

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Send us a text We journey down to San Antonio to talk UIW Cardinals Hoops with Coach Shane Heirman on the latest Full Court Press : A College Basketball Coaches Show as we dish on the uber competitive Southland Conference and how good year 3 can be on the hardwoods at UIW. Really great time with this Coach who you need to keep on your radar plus yo…

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Debra Michals, "She's the Boss: The Rise of Women’s Entrepreneurship since World War II" (Rutgers UP, 2025) 43:55

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In the years after World War II, as women were being pushed from wartime jobs for returning soldiers, government and business leaders—and women themselves—saw small business ownership as a viable economic solution. In just five years, US women owned nearly a million of the nation’s businesses. In the decades since, women have moved increasingly int…

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Paris Papamichos Chronakis, "The Business of Transition: Jewish and Greek Merchants of Salonica from Ottoman to Greek Rule" (Stanford UP, 2024) 1:11:50

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The Business of Transition: Jewish and Greek Merchants of Salonica from Ottoman to Greek Rule (Stanford UP, 2024) examines how the cosmopolitan bourgeoisie of the Eastern Mediterranean navigated the transition from empire to nation-state in the early twentieth century. In this social and cultural history, Paris Papamichos Chronakis shows how the Je…

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Hellenistic Judaism 29:13

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Many Jewish around the turn of the millennium lived outside of Judaea. Where were these Greek-speaking Jews and what do we know about them?By Michael Satlow

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Edward Fishman, "Chokepoints: American Power in the Age of Economic Warfare" (Portfolio, 2025) 1:00:18

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“The acme of skill,” Sun Tzu wrote in The Art of War, is not “to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles,” but “to subdue the enemy without fighting.” The author of Chokepoints: American Power in the Age of Economic Warfare (Portfolio, 2025) has devoted much of his career to exploring how economic power can advance this goal. He served on …

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Bob Wyss, "Black Gold: The Rise, Reign, and Fall of American Coal" (University of California Press, 2025) 47:28

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For decades coal has been crucial to America's culture, society, and environment, an essential ingredient in driving out winter's cold, cooking meals, and lighting the dark. In the coalfields and beyond, in Black Gold: The Rise, Reign, and Fall of American Coal (University of California Press, 2025) Bob Wyss describes how this magical elixir sparke…

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Calvin Schermerhorn, "The Plunder of Black America: How the Racial Wealth Gap Was Made" (Yale UP, 2025) 1:04:55

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Dr. J Calvin Schermerhorn is a professor of history in the School of Historical, Philosophical, and Religious Studies at Arizona State University. His books include The Business of Slavery and the Rise of American Capitalism, 1815–1860, and Unrequited Toil: A History of United States Slavery. He lives in Tempe, AZ. The long history of the racial we…

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Karen Robert, "Driving Terror: Labor, Violence, and Justice in Cold War Argentina" (U New Mexico Press, 2025) 1:04:55

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Driving Terror: Labor, Violence, and Justice in Cold War Argentina (U New Mexico Press, 2025) by Dr. Karen Robert tells the story of twenty-four Ford autoworkers in Argentina who were tortured and “disappeared” for their union activism in 1976, miraculously survived, and pursued a decades-long quest for truth and justice. In December 2018, more tha…

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Victoria Bateman, "Economica: A Global History of Women, Wealth and Power" (Seal Press, 2025) 56:43

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How many female entrepreneurs, economic revolutionaries, merchants, and industrialists can you name? You would be forgiven for thinking that, until very recently, there were none at all. But what about Phryne, the richest woman in ancient Athens, who offered to pay to rebuild the walls of Thebes after the city was razed by Alexander the Great? Or w…

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Bradley A. Gorski, "Cultural Capitalism: Literature and the Market After Socialism" (Northern Illinois UP, 2025) 1:01:25

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Bradley Gorski, a literary and culture scholar, examines the breakneck commercialization of Russian book publishing and of Russian literature more broadly – in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union. In the early 1990s, thousands of new publishers emerged, up from a mere two hundred at the Soviet Union’s end. The notion of the “bestseller” qu…

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#148: Virginia Commonwealth University Men's Basketball - The Martelli Brothers 38:22

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Send us a text One is better than two when it comes to the Martelli Family. So we welcome back new VCU Head Men's Basketball Coach Phil Martelli Jr. and his little brother new VCU Associate Head Men's Basketball Coach Jimmy Martelli to the Full Court Press : A College Basketball Coaches Show as we talk all things great about VCU Hoops, their epic f…

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Origins of Jewish Sectarianism 29:50

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Several Jewish sects, especially Pharisees and Sadducees, emerge into the historical record at this time. Who are they?By Michael Satlow

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CAROLE KING 24:35

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Carole King’s extraordinary career has defined American popular music for more than half a century. Join us with journalist Jane Eisner, author of the new biography Carole King: She Made the Earth Move, as we explore King’s lasting contributions to the great American songbook.By Jewish Lives

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Lucy Sante, "Nineteen Reservoirs: On Their Creation and the Promise of Water for New York City (The Experiment, 2022) 36:51

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From 1907 to 1967, a network of reservoirs and aqueducts was built across more than one million acres in upstate New York, including Greene, Delaware, Sullivan, and Ulster Counties. This feat of engineering served to meet New York City’s ever-increasing need for water, sustaining its inhabitants and cementing it as a center of industry. West of the…

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

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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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147: Siena Men's Basketball Coach Gerry McNamara 30:01

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Send us a text RETURN OF THE MACK as Siena Saints Head Men's Basketball Coach Gerry McNamara comes back on the Full Court Press to talk Siena Hoops and tells us how good is the MAAC Conference. We are big fans of Coach and watch for the Saints in year 2 of the Gerry McNamara Era. Also, the MAAC is awesome ball!! SUBSCRIBE to the Full Court Press YO…

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Janick Marina Schaufelbuehl, "Crusading for Globalization: US Multinationals and Their Opponents Since 1945" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025) 1:06:57

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Crusading for Globalization: US Multinationals and Their Opponents Since 1945 (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2025) tells the story of an extraordinarily influential group of business executives at the helms of the largest US multinational corporations and their quest to drive globalization forward over the last eight decades. Janick Marina Scha…

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David Welsh, "The Social Railway and Its Workers in Europes Modern Era, 1880-2023: Moments of Fury, Ramparts of Hope" (Bloomsbury, 2025) 1:04:50

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The Social Railway and Its Workers in Europe’s Modern Era, 1880-2023: Moments of Fury, Ramparts of Hope (Bloomsbury, 2025) by Dr. David Welsh examines the evolution of rail transport and a number of railway workforces across Europe in the modern era, from around 1880 to 2023. Each chapter explores how, within the context of a social railway, rail w…

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The Hasmonean Kings 31:46

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The Maccabees were successful. The dynasty they began, perhaps not so much.By Michael Satlow

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Jumping Through Hoops: Performing Gender in the 19th Century Circus 34:42

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Jumping Through Hoops: Performing Gender in the 19th Century Circus, by Betsy Golden Kellem, reveals the hidden history of early female circus performers: boundary-breaking women like Lavinia Warren, known as the Queen of Beauty; to Millie-Christine McKoy, the Two-Headed Nightingale; to Patty Astley, the mother of the modern circus. These astoundin…

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William Kelleher Storey, "The Colonialist: The Vision of Cecil Rhodes" (Oxford UP, 2025) 1:04:41

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Cecil John Rhodes became one of the most influential people in the history of the British Empire. He made a fortune in South Africa by leading the world's most important diamond mining company, De Beers, as well as a gold-mining concern called Consolidated Gold Fields. While he was a busy entrepreneur, he was also a member of the Cape Colony's legi…

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David J. Lynch, "The World's Worst Bet: How the Globalization Gamble Went Wrong (And What Would Make It Right)" (PublicAffairs, 2025) 58:59

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The triumphant globalization that began in the 1990s has given way to a world riven by conflict, populism, and economic nationalism. In The World's Worst Bet: How the Globalization Gamble Went Wrong (And What Would Make It Right), (PublicAffairs, 2025) David J. Lynch offers a trenchant, fast-paced narrative of the rise and fall of the greatest engi…

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Dan Roche, "Eyes by Hand: Prosthetics of Art and Healing" (MIT Press, 2025) 1:05:02

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Eyes by Hand: Prosthetics of Art and Healing (MIT Press, 2025) is a book about artificial eyes—about the artisans and artists who make them, and about the life-changing and sometimes life-saving experience of wearing them, as author Dan Roche has done for 15 years. Eye making is done by hand, for one person at a time, by a very small number of ocul…

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David McNally, "Slavery and Capitalism: A New Marxist History" (U California Press, 2025) 43:05

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David McNally's Slavery and Capitalism: A New Marxist History (U California Press, 2025)presents the first systematic Marxist account of the capitalist character of Atlantic slavery. McNally argues that enslaved labour within the plantation system constituted capitalist commodity production, and crucially, reframes the resistance of enslaved people…

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Revolt of the Maccabees 32:05

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Why did the Maccabees revolt around 165 BCE? This episode explores both the revolt of the Maccabees and the origins of the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah.By Michael Satlow

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Maren A. Ehlers, "Give and Take: Poverty and the Status Order in Early Modern Japan" (Harvard U Asia Center, 2018) 1:08:51

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Maren A. Ehlers’s Give and Take: Poverty and the Status Order in Early Modern Japan (Harvard University Asia Center, 2018) examines the ways in which ordinary subjects—including many so-called outcastes and other marginalized groups—participated in the administration and regulation of society in Tokugawa Japan. Within this context, the book focuses…

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Tia Sahrakorpi on a Use-Based History of Electricity in Finland 1:20:25

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Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Tiia Sahrakorpi, Visiting Professor at Weber State University, about her interesting book project, Our Land: An Oral History of Energy, which was funded by the Research Council of Finland. The project, which was rooted in oral histories in three locations in Finland, takes a use-based perspective and ex…

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Joshua Specht, "Red Meat Republic: A Hoof-to-Table History of How Beef Changed America" (Princeton UP, 2019) 30:37

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Why do Americans eat so much beef? In Red Meat Republic: A Hoof-to-Table History of How Beef Changed America (Princeton University Press, 2019), the historian Joshua Specht provides a history that shows how our diets and consumer choices remain rooted in nineteenth century enterprises. A century and half ago, he writes, the colonialism and appropri…

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Daniel Wortel-London, "The Menace of Prosperity: New York City and the Struggle for Economic Development, 1865–1981" (U of Chicago Press, 2025) 30:20

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Many local policymakers make decisions based on a deep-seated belief: what’s good for the rich is good for cities. Convinced that local finances depend on attracting wealthy firms and residents, municipal governments lavish public subsidies on their behalf. Whatever form this strategy takes—tax-exempt apartments, corporate incentives, debt-financed…

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Laura Murphy, "Freedomville: The Story of a 21st-Century Slave Revolt" (Columbia Global Reports, 2021) 44:03

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A celebrated revolution brought freedom to a group of enslaved people in northern India. Or did it? Millions of people around the world today are enslaved; nearly eight million of them live in India, more than anywhere else. Freedomville: The Story of a 21st-Century Slave Revolt (Columbia Global Reports, 2021) by Dr. Laura Murphy is the story of a …

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Peter Conti-Brown and Sean H. Vanatta, "Private Finance, Public Power: A History of Bank Supervision in America" (Princeton UP, 2025) 53:22

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What does it mean to supervise a bank? And why does it matter who holds that power? In this episode, Sean H. Vanatta joins us to explore the hidden machinery behind American finance, as told in his new book Private Finance, Public Power: A History of Bank Supervision in America (Princeton UP, 2025), co-authored with Peter Conti-Brown. Spanning near…

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Thane Gustafson, "Perfect Storm: Russia's Failed Economic Opening, the Hurricane of War and Sanctions, and the Uncertain Future" (Oxford UP, 2025) 1:02:18

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Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 brought a tragic close to a thirty-year period of history that began with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the reopening of Russia to the West after six decades of Soviet isolation. The opening lasted for three tumultuous decades and ended with a new closing, driven by the Ukrainian war, the imposition of We…

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146: Mississippi State Men's Basketball Coach Chris Jans 27:49

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Send us a text We head to the SOUTH to talk SEC Basketball with Mississippi State Men's Basketball Coach Chris Jans as we talk Bulldog hoops and how good the SEC Conference could be this upcoming season. Coach shares his all-time funniest recruiting story and dishes on Josh Hubbard who is clearly one of the top players in conference and nation. Rea…

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John Singer Sargent’s Paris Years 35:52

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A conversation with Met curator Stephanie Herdrich about the exhibition and book Sargent and ParisBy Yale University Press

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Anders M. Greene-Crow, "Austerity Measures: The Poetics of Food Insecurity in Early Modern English Literature" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025) 1:04:33

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My guest today is Anders M. Greene-Crow. Anders teaches at the Woods College of Advancing Studies and is a former Professor of English at Boston College. More recently, Anders has been preparing for the New York state bar exam, while also co-hosting the podcast “Say Podcast and Die!,” about R.L. Stine’s book series, Goosebumps. Today, we are discus…

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Victoria Basualdo et al., "Big Business and Dictatorships in Latin America: A Transnational History of Profits and Repression" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020) 50:40

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On this episode of the Economic and Business History channel, I spoke with Dr. Victoria Basualdo and Dr. Marcelo Bucheli about their new edited book. Big Business and Dictatorships in Latin America: A Transnational History of Profits and Repression (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020) is an edited volume that studies the relationship between big business and…

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Nicholas Birman Trickett, "Empire of Austerity: Russia and the Breaking of Eurasia" (Hurst, 2025) 42:16

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Empire of Austerity: Russia and the Breaking of Eurasia (Hurst, 2025) traces how Russian economic policy precipitated the country’s slide towards an increasingly coercive authoritarianism, a hubristic challenge to the West, and all-out war with Ukraine. Decades of dependence on commodity exports, failure to invest and failure to consume enough have…

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Gregg Mitman, "Empire of Rubber: Firestone's Scramble for Land and Power in Liberia" (New Press, 2021) 42:00

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In the early 1920s, Americans owned 80 percent of the world’s automobiles and consumed 75 percent of the world’s rubber. But only one percent of the world’s rubber grew under the U.S. flag, creating a bottleneck that hampered the nation’s explosive economic expansion. To solve its conundrum, the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company turned to a tiny We…

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Angela C. Tozer, "The Debt of a Nation: Land and the Financing of the Canadian Settler State, 1820-73" (U of British Columbia Press, 2025) 1:07:31

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You’ve got to speculate to accumulate. We apply that notion to individuals in pursuit of wealth, but what about countries? The Debt of a Nation: Land and the Financing of the Canadian Settler State, 1820–73 (U of British Columbia Press, 2025) is the first comprehensive history of Canada’s nineteenth-century public debt. Beginning in the 1820s, loan…

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#145: McNeese State Men's Basketball Coach Bill Armstrong 30:51

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Send us a text We got NEW McNeese State Head Men's Basketball Coach Bill Armstrong on the Full Court Press : A College Basketball Coaches Show powered by the Full Court Network. We are jacked for Coach Armstrong to get this opportunity to continue the rise of McNeese Basketball. In this fun and enlightening episode, we talk his coaching identity, w…

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Mariya Grinberg, "Trade in War: Economic Cooperation Across Enemy Lines" (Cornell UP, 2025) 46:17

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Trade between belligerents during wartime should not occur. After all, exchanged goods might help enemies secure the upper hand on the battlefield. Yet as history shows, states rarely choose either war or trade. In fact, they frequently engage in both at the same time. To explain why states trade with their enemies, in Trade in War: Economic Cooper…

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Bench Ansfield, "Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City" (Norton, 2025) 48:18

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“Ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx is burning!” That legendary and apocryphal phrase, allegedly uttered by announcers during the 1977 World Series as flames rose above Yankee Stadium, seemed to encapsulate an entire era in this nation’s urban history. Across that decade, a wave of arson coursed through American cities, destroying entire neighborhoods…

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Shennette Garrett-Scott, "Banking on Freedom: Black Women in U.S. Finance Before the New Deal" (Columbia UP, 2019) 41:58

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Think running an insurance company or a bank is hard? Try doing it as an African-American woman in the Jim Crow South. Shennette Garrett-Scott's new book, Banking on Freedom: Black Women in U.S. Finance Before the New Deal (Columbia University Press, 2019) tells the fascinating story of just such an endeavor, first the Independent Order of St. Luke…

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The Book of Jubilees and 1 Enoch 27:26

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A discussion of two books dating from the third or second centuries, BCE, Jubilees and 1 Enoch. Both books, part of a collection traditionally known as "the Pseudepigrapha," testify to a Jewish understanding of continuing direct divine revelation in the Hellenistic period.By Michael Satlow

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Steve L. Monroe, "Mirages of Reform: The Politics of Elite Protectionism in the Arab World" (Cornell UP, 2025) 24:00

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In Mirages of Reform: The Politics of Elite Protectionism in the Arab World (Cornell UP, 2025), Steve L. Monroe argues that geopolitics and social connections between state and capital underpin the Arab world's uneven trade policies. Despite decades of international pressure, neoliberal trade policy reform in the Arab world has been varied, selecti…

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Mary Bridges on US Bankers Abroad and the Making of a Global Superpower 1:08:10

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Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Mary Bridges, Ernest May Fellow in History and Policy at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, about her book, Dollars and Dominion: US Bankers and the Making of a Superpower. Dollars and Dominion takes an infrastructural view of ba…