In this episode, I interview R.A. Judy, professor of Critical and Cultural Studies at the University of Pittsburgh, about his book Sentient Flesh: Thinking in Disorder, Poiēsis in Black, which was published by Duke University Press in 2020. In Sentient Flesh R. A. Judy takes up freedman Tom Windham’s 1937 remark “we should have our liberty 'cause . . . us is ... Show More
Yesterday
Ryan Donovan, "Broadway Bodies: A Critical History of Conformity" (Oxford UP, 2023)
Broadway has body issues. What is a Broadway Body? Broadway has long preserved the ideology of the "Broadway Body": the hyper-fit, exceptionally able, triple-threat performer who represents how Broadway musicals favor certain kinds of bodies. Casting is always a political act, si ... Show More
1h 13m
Yesterday
Laurie Parsons, "Carbon Colonialism: How Rich Countries Export Climate Breakdown" (Manchester UP, 2023)
Climate change is devastating the planet, and globalisation is hiding it. Laurie Parsons's book Carbon Colonialism: How Rich Countries Export Climate Breakdown (Manchester UP, 2023) opens our eyes. Around the world, leading economies are announcing significant progress on climate ... Show More
44m 38s
Jan 17
Mark Christian Thompson, "Phenomenal Blackness: Black Power, Philosophy, and Theory" (U Chicago Press, 2022)
Mark Christian Thompson's book, Phenomenal Blackness: Black Power, Philosophy, and Theory (University of Chicago Press, 2022) examines the changing interdisciplinary investments of key mid-century African American writers and thinkers, showing how their investments in sociology a ... Show More
1h 2m
Aug 2023
Travis Holloway, "How to Live at the End of the World: Theory, Art, and Politics for the Anthropocene" (Stanford UP, 2022)
the near universal disappearance of shared social enterprise: the ruling class builds walls and lunar shuttles, while the rest of us contend with the atrophy of institutional integrity and the utter abdication of providing even minimal shelter from looming disaster.
The irony of ... Show More
51m 14s
May 2023
Eva Haifa Giraud, "What Comes After Entanglement?: Activism, Anthropocentrism, and an Ethics of Exclusion" (Duke UP, 2019)
By foregrounding the ways that human existence is bound together with the lives of other entities, contemporary cultural theorists have sought to move beyond an anthropocentric worldview. Yet as Eva Haifa Giraud contends in What Comes After Entanglement?: Activism, Anthropocentri ... Show More
38m 22s
Jun 2020
Brian Greene, "Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe" (Random House, 2020)
Brian Greene is a Professor of Mathematics and Physics at Columbia University in the City of New York, where he is the Director of the Institute for Strings, Cosmology, and Astroparticle Physics, and co-founder and chair of the World Science Festival. He is well known for his TV ... Show More
2 h
Feb 2023
Monima Chadha, "Selfless Minds: A Contemporary Perspective on Vasubandhu's Metaphysics" (Oxford UP, 2022)
Buddhists are famous for their thesis that selves do not exist. But if they are right, what would that thesis mean for our apparent sense of self and for ordinary practices involving selves—or at least persons? In Selfless Minds: A Contemporary Perspective on Vasubandhu’s Metaphy ... Show More
1h 5m
May 2021
Steve Dixon, "Cybernetic-Existentialism: Freedom, Systems, and Being-for-Others in Contemporary Arts and Performance" (Routledge, 2020)
Like the transdiscipline of cybernetics, the philosophical movement known as Existentialism rose to prominence in the decade following World War II, was communicated to the general public by a handful of charismatic evangelizers who, for a time, became bona fide celebrities in po ... Show More
1h 3m
Jul 2012
John Burnham, “After Freud Left: A Century of Psychoanalysis in America” (University of Chicago Press, 2012)
Perhaps most of us interested in psychoanalysis in the United States have the idea that, in 1909, when Freud lectured at Clark University, his first and only visit to this country, the profession was launched. That Freud was perhaps an afterthought to a larger celebration at the ... Show More
56m 43s
Dec 2020
149. The After Time: The Future of Civilization After COVID-19
<p>In this special episode of the Science Salon podcast, the last of 2020, Dr. Michael Shermer offers some reflections on 2020, starting with race and the Black Lives Movement, putting it into perspective from other books he read this year, along with podcast guests who appeared ... Show More
43m 35s
Jul 2021
Patricia Churchland, “Philosophy of Brain” (Open Agenda, 2021)
Philosophy of Brain is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and neurophilosopher Patricia Churchland, UC San Diego. Patricia Churchland has done extensive research in the fields of philosophy of neuroscience, philosophy of the mind and neuroethics. Durin ... Show More
1h 37m