Alan Klima’s Ethnography #9 (Duke University Press, 2019) was co-written by a ghost. And that’s just the start of what’s going on in this eerie, singular book. It’s a discussion of finance in post-crash Thailand, a study of non-material histories, and an examination of the limits of anthropological writing. It’s also at once a complex and textured challenge ... Show More
Today
Richard S. Ruback and Royce Yudkoff, "HBR Guide to Buying a Small Business: Think Big, Buy Small, Own Your Own Company" (HBR Press, 2017)
Are you looking for an alternative to a career path at a big firm? Does founding your own start-up seem too risky? There is a radical third path open to you: You can buy a small business and run it as CEO. Purchasing a small company offers significant financial rewards--as well a ... Show More
55m 16s
Today
Verena Halsmayer on Managing Growth in Miniature: Solow’s Model as an Artifact
Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, chats with Verena Halsmeyer, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Vienna, about her recent, award-winning book, Managing Growth in Miniature: Solow’s Model as an Artifact. The book explores the history of the way economists think about gro ... Show More
1h 22m
Nov 20
Ivan Franceschini et al., "Scam: Inside Southeast Asia's Cybercrime Compounds" (Verso Books, 2025)
“If I had been enslaved for a year or two, I might not be able to believe in humanity any more.” “I am a victim of modern slavery.”
These chilling words come from a Taiwanese female lured by a fake job offer, only to be sold into a scam compound in Cambodia. She is not alone. Sh ... Show More
50m 32s
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
Jan 2024
Joseph C. Russo, "Hard Luck and Heavy Rain: The Ecology of Stories in Southeast Texas" (Duke UP, 2022)
In Hard Luck and Heavy Rain: The Ecology of Stories in Southeast Texas (Duke UP, 2023), Joseph C. Russo takes readers into the everyday lives of the rural residents of Southeast Texas. He encounters the region as a kind of world enveloped in on itself, existing under a pall of po ... Show More
34m 14s
Mar 2023
Patrick L. Schmidt, "Harvard's Quixotic Pursuit of a New Science: The Rise and Fall of the Department of Social Relations" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2022)
Harvard's Department of Social Relations made history in the 1950s and 1960s as the most ambitious program in social science in the United States. Dedicated to a synthesis of sociology, anthropology, psychology, and other disciplines, the scope of its ambitions were matched only ... Show More
1h 20m
Jan 2017
Anthony Lioi, “Nerd Ecology: Defending the Earth with Unpopular Culture” (Bloomsbury Academic, 2016)
In Nerd Ecology: Defending the Earth with Unpopular Culture (Bloomsbury Academic, 2016), Anthony Lioi examines literature, film, television, and comics through an ecocritical study of nerd culture. Lioi explores Star Trek, The Hunger Games, The Matrix, Lord of the Rings, Buffy th ... Show More
1h 7m
Feb 2024
Theoretical & Creative Ecology (SCIENCE & ECOPOETRY) with Madhur Anand
<p>Environmental models! Poetry! Scientists who are poets! Novelists who are scientists! Art + science = an actual -ology. Creative Ecologist, climate scientist, theoretical ecologist, author and celebrated poet Dr. Madhur Anand sits on a porch with me on an island to chat about ... Show More
57m 3s
Jan 2020
Neil Maher, "Apollo in the Age of Aquarius" (Harvard UP, 2017)
Neil Maher talks about the social forces that shaped NASA in the 1960s and 70s, connecting the space race with the radical upheavals of the counterculture. Maher is a professor of history at the New Jersey Institute of Technology and Rutgers University, Newark. He is the author o ... Show More
33m 39s
Feb 2017
Randy Olson, “Houston, We Have a Narrative: Why Science Needs Story” (U. Chicago Press, 2015)
Randy Olson, author of Houston, We Have a Narrative: Why Science Needs Story (University of Chicago Press, 2015), has an unusual background. He is a Harvard-trained biologist and former tenured professor who resigned from his academic post to earn a degree from the world-renowned ... Show More
1h 3m
Mar 2023
Patrick L. Schmidt, "Harvard's Quixotic Pursuit of a New Science: The Rise and Fall of the Department of Social Relations" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2022)
Harvard's Department of Social Relations made history in the 1950s and 1960s as the most ambitious program in social science in the United States. Dedicated to a synthesis of sociology, anthropology, psychology, and other disciplines, the scope of its ambitions were matched only ... Show More
1h 20m
Sep 2017
Nicholas C. Kawa, “Amazonia in the Anthropocene: People, Soils, Plants, and Forests” (U. Texas Press, 2016)
Widespread human alteration of the planet has led many scholars to claim that we have entered a new epoch in geological time: the Anthropocene, an age dominated by humanity. This ethnography is the first to directly engage the Anthropocene, tackling its problems and paradoxes fro ... Show More
26m 41s