Mar 23
Steffan Blayney, "Health and Efficiency: Fatigue, the Science of Work, and the Making of the Working-Class Body" (Activist Studies of Science, 2022)
Our guest today is Steffan Blayney, the author of Health & Efficiency: Fatigue, the Science of Work, and the Making of the Working-Class Body. In Health & Efficiency, Blayney explores a new model of health that emerged in Britain between 1870 and 1939. Centered on the working bod ... Show More
44m 7s
Mar 21
Sidra Hamidi, "After Fission: Recognition and Contestation in the Atomic Age" (Cambridge UP, 2026)
Nuclear status is typically treated as a stable feature of a state's capacity to possess, use, or build nuclear weapons. Challenging this view, After Fission: Recognition and Contestation in the Atomic Age (Cambridge University Press, 2026) by Dr. Sidra Hamidi reveals how states ... Show More
56m 44s
Mar 20
Karima Moyer-Nocchi, "The Epic History of Macaroni and Cheese: From Ancient Rome to Modern America" (Columbia UP, 2026)
Today, macaroni and cheese is the ultimate comfort food, a staple of weeknight dinners, family gatherings, and Soul Food restaurants. Humble though the dish may seem, its history is filled with surprising twists and turns. Renaissance cardinals and popes dined on elaborate pasta- ... Show More
1h 14m
Jun 2023
Rose Hackman, "Emotional Labor: The Invisible Work Shaping Our Lives and How to Claim Our Power" (Flatiron Books, 2023)
In some ways, Hackman’s Emotional Labor: The Invisible Work Shaping Our Lives and How to Claim Our Power (Flatiron Books, 2023) serves as a natural update to Arlie Hochschild’s classic, The Managed Heart. After all, in public life it’s most often the women members of the service ... Show More
21 m
Sep 2025
That's Marriage–A Classic Short Story by Edna Ferber
Marriage takes the simple concept of procreation and turns it into a lifelong commitment that can, at times, lead to unexpected anger and resentment. As Mark Twain once said, "God's great cosmic joke on the human race was requiring that men and women live together in marriage.” A ... Show More
56m 38s
May 2023
Leah Phillips, "Female Heroes in Young Adult Fantasy Fiction: Reframing Myths of Adolescent Girlhood" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
The heroic romance is one of the West's most enduring narratives, found everywhere, from religion and myth to blockbuster films and young adult literature. Within this story, adolescent girls are not, and cannot be, the heroes. They are, at best, the hero's bride, a prize he wins ... Show More
57m 28s
Sep 2023
Kristal Brent Zook, "The Girl in the Yellow Poncho: A Memoir" (Duke UP, 2023)
At five years old, Kristal Brent Zook sat on the steps of a Venice Beach, California, motel trying to make sense of her white father’s abandonment, which left her feeling unworthy of a man’s love and of white protection. Raised by her working-class African American mother and gra ... Show More
30m 20s
May 2023
Jo Littler, "Left Feminisms: Conversations on the Personal and Political" (Lawrence Wishart, 2023)
What is the history and future of feminism? In Left Feminisms: Conversations on the Personal and Political (Lawrence Wishart, 2023), Jo Littler, Professor of Social Analysis and Cultural Politics at City, University of London, collects almost a decade of interviews with key think ... Show More
34m 58s
Cinderella stories captured the imagination of girls in the 1950s, when dreams of meeting the right man could seem like a happy ending, a solution to life's problems. But over the next fifty years women's lives were transformed, not by the magic wand of a fairy godmother, nor by marrying princes, but by education, work, birth control--and feminism. However, ... Show More
