Yesterday
Yuri Pines, "China's Aristocratic Age: Politics and Power in the Springs-and-Autumns Period" (Princeton UP, 2026)
The Springs-and-Autumns period is a strange period in Chinese history. Coming after the decline of the Zhou, and before the famous Warring States Period, this period of Chinese history features a large number of small states with no powerful hegemon, no strong sense of the mandat ... Show More
46m 18s
Aug 25
Chenchen Zhang, "Easting the West: Theorizing the Postliberal Conjuncture from China" (Oxford UP, 2026)
With commentary on the emergence of a ‘multipolar’ world, of transatlantic rifts and the rise of ‘middle powers’ ubiquitous, tales of the decline of something called ‘the West’ seem to be everywhere. Yet the meanings the idea of ‘the West’ acquires in spaces beyond it tell us at ... Show More
1h 10m
Aug 23
Old Lhasa: A Biography of a Sacred City
Michael Aldrich joins John Ross to discuss Old Lhasa: A Biography, his richly detailed portrait of Tibet’s historic capital. It’s the third book in his trilogy on Asian cultural centers. He wrote the first two, on Beijing and Ulaanbaatar, while living in those cities, where he wo ... Show More
32m 48s
Dec 2021
Alisa Freedman, "Japan on American TV: Screaming Samurai Join Anime Clubs in the Land of the Lost" (Association for Asian Studies, 2021)
Alisa Freedman's book Japan on American TV: Screaming Samurai Join Anime Clubs in the Land of the Lost (Association for Asian Studies, 2021) explores political, economic, and cultural issues underlying depictions of Japan on U.S. television comedies and the programs they inspired ... Show More
56m 54s
Jan 2024
It's Tea Time: Pirates, Polyphenols, and a Proper Cuppa (encore)
This week, Gastropod tells the story of two countries and their shared obsession with a plant: Camellia sinensis, otherwise known as the tea bush. The Chinese domesticated tea over thousands of years, but they lost their near monopoly on international trade when a Scottish botani ... Show More
45m 21s
May 2022
Susan Westhafer Furukawa, "The Afterlife of Toyotomi Hideyoshi: Historical Fiction and Popular Culture in Japan" (Harvard UP, 2022)
Popular representations of the past are everywhere in Japan, from cell phone charms to manga, from television dramas to video games to young people dressed as their favorite historical figures hanging out in the hip Harajuku district. But how does this mass consumption of the pas ... Show More
40 m
Dec 2020
Kelly A. Hammond, "China's Muslims and Japan's Empire: Centering Islam in World War II" (UNC Press, 2020)
The 1930s-40s expansion of the Japanese empire was marked by significant interest among Japan-based scholars and policy-makers in China’s Muslim population and how best to write them into a new pan-Asian story. At the very same time, as Kelly Hammond shows in China's Muslims and ... Show More
59m 34s
Feb 2023
Tea: The Splendid Elixir, Part 2
In this series from Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe discuss the history, mythology, culture and nature of tea. So start a kettle and prepare to listen with your favorite cup… See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
52m 23s
Feb 2023
Tea: The Splendid Elixir, Part 3
In this series from Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe discuss the history, mythology, culture and nature of tea. So start a kettle and prepare to listen with your favorite cup… See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
58m 57s
Aug 2023
Michael R. Jin, "Citizens, Immigrants, and the Stateless: A Japanese American Diaspora in the Pacific" (Stanford UP, 2021)
This episode features a conversation with Dr. Michael R. Jin regarding his recently published book Citizens, Immigrants, and the Stateless: The Japanese American Diaspora in the Pacific. Published in November 2021 by Stanford University Press, the book weaves together Jin’s speci ... Show More
1h 7m
Apr 2024
Paul Hansen, "Hokkaido Dairy Farm: Cosmopolitics of Otherness and Security on the Frontiers of Japan" (SUNY Press, 2024)
As an ethnography of a Japanese dairy farm while having theoretical values going beyond the specific context, Hokkaido Dairy Farm: Cosmopolitics of Otherness and Security on the Frontiers of Japan (SUNY Press, 2024) offers a historical and ethnographic examination of the rapid in ... Show More
49m 8s
Robert Hellyer’s Green with Milk and Sugar: When Japan Filled America's Tea Cups (Columbia UP, 2021) is a tale of American and Japanese teaways, skillfully weaving together stories of Midwesterners drinking green tea (with milk and sugar, to be sure), the recent and complex origins of Japan's love of now-ubiquitous sencha, Ceylon tea merchants exploiting Ame ... Show More
