logo
episode-header-image
May 2021
42m 54s

Jenny White, "Turkish Kaleidoscope: Frac...

Marshall Poe
About this episode
The scene is Turkey in the mid-to-late Seventies. A young male college student hops onto a bus. He sits next to a cute female student from his class, but before they can strike up a conversation, they see a right-wing passenger, walk up to another passenger and hit him on the head with a hammer. The young woman screams. The two students get off the bus, only ... Show More
Up next
Feb 21
Mai Serhan, "I Can Imagine It for Us: A Palestinian Daughter's Memoir" (American University in Cairo Press, 2025)
I Can Imagine It for Us: A Palestinian Daughter's Memoir (American University in Cairo Press, 2025) is a young woman’s search for connection with her estranged father, her family’s past, and the Palestinian homeland she can never visit Mai Serhan lives in Cairo and has never been ... Show More
32m 13s
Feb 20
Eray Çayli, "Earthmoving: Extractivism, War, and Visuality in Northern Kurdistan" (U Texas Press, 2025)
Extractivism—exploiting the earth for resources—has long driven racial capitalism and colonialism. And yet, how does extractivism operate in a world where ecological and humanitarian sensibilities are unprecedentedly widespread? Eray Çaylı argues it does so by mobilizing these se ... Show More
1h 3m
Feb 19
David Frankfurter ed., "Guide to the Study of Ancient Magic" (Brill, 2019)
In the midst of academic debates about the utility of the term “magic” and the cultural meaning of ancient words like mageia or khesheph, this Guide to the Study of Ancient Magic seeks to advance the discussion by separating out three topics essential to the very idea of magic. T ... Show More
39m 44s
Recommended Episodes
Jun 2021
Christine Philliou on reimagining Turkish history and the roots of political dissent
Christine Philliou, associate professor of history at UC Berkeley, on “Turkey: A Past Against History” (University of California Press). The book examines the life of the writer Refik Halid Karay (1888-1965), interrogating the shifting meaning of political dissent from Ottoman to ... Show More
42m 15s
Jun 2019
Elif Mahir Metinsoy on Ottoman women during World War I
Elif Mahir Metinsoy on her book “Ottoman Women During World War I: Everyday Experiences, Politics and Conflict” (Cambridge University Press). The book describes the lives of Muslim women in the Ottoman Empire during the Great War, moving beyond a focus on the educated urban popul ... Show More
23m 23s
Sep 2023
Trendsetters: Helen Gurley Brown
Helen Gurley Brown (c.1922-2012) helped shape a new vision of working girls. As editor and chief of Cosmopolitan magazine and author of the international bestseller “Sex and the Single Girl,” she advocated (sometimes controversially) for women’s sexual freedom and autonomy. For F ... Show More
4m 38s
Sep 2023
Why Turkey Is Authoritarian w/ Halil Karaveli [REMASTERED]
<p>This episode is a fully-remastered edition of a previous episode we released, where we brought on Halil Karaveli to talk about Why Turkey Is Authoritarian. This discussion was our second interview ever on the show, and while the format of the show has slightly changed over the ... Show More
1h 52m
Jan 2024
Tuğba Tekerek on the crisis in Turkish academia
<p>Tuğba Tekerek on “Provincial Universities: The AK Party’s Backyard Campus" (İletişim). The book examines the government's push to open over 100 universities across Turkey over the past two decades, painting a picture of falling academic standards but increased outlets for the ... Show More
38m 58s
Nov 2023
Women Behind the Curtain: Sorghaghtani Beki
Sorghaghtani Beki (c. 1190-1252) was one of the most powerful people in the Mongol Empire. Daughter-in-law to Genghis Khan, she used unique forms of diplomacy to cement her place in Mongol society and create a path forward for all four of her sons to become Khans in their own rig ... Show More
5m 26s
Feb 2021
Turkey: Adnan Menderes, populism, and history
Turkey and 50s Prime Minister Menderes, Erdogan today, and how history is used for political power. Matthew Sweet is joined by Jeremy Seal, Ece Temelkuran, Michael Talbot & Nilay Ozlu.Before his execution in 1961, the Turkish prime minister Adnan Menderes saw Turkey admitted to N ... Show More
45m 4s
Nov 2023
Violence, Nonviolence & the Palestinian National Movement | Wendy Pearlman
<p>Peace processes, two-state vs one-state solutions and nonviolent protests. In conversation with Professor Wendy Pearlman from Northwestern University, we take two of her books as a foundation to examine grassroots activism historically and to consider a potential future “just” ... Show More
1h 3m
Aug 2023
Folk Heroes: Hua Mulan
Hua Mulan (c. 400-600 AD) was the hero of an iconic Chinese tale that remains a symbol of courage, familial duty, and national pride. This month, we're talking about Folk Heroes. People whose lives and stories took on mythic proportions. History classes can get a bad rap, and som ... Show More
4m 56s
Jun 2019
Jennifer Dixon, "Dark Pasts: Changing the State’s Story in Turkey and Japan" (Cornell UP, 2018)
Jennifer Dixon’s Dark Pasts: Changing the State’s Story in Turkey and Japan (Cornell University Press, 2018), investigates the Japanese and Turkish states’ narratives of their “dark pasts,” the Nanjing Massacre (1937-38) and Armenian Genocide (1915-17), respectively. The official ... Show More
1h 2m