Sheila Liming talks about the party, social gatherings that occasion joy and dread and various emotions in between. The party is both a pause and an acceleration in the life-work continuum, it can deaden political motivation and engender fresh politics. We discuss the horrible parties in The Office and the wonderful parties in Small Axe, among other things.
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Apr 2025
Amy Zhang, "Circular Ecologies: Environmentalism and Waste Politics in Urban China" (Stanford UP, 2024)
After four decades of reform and development, China is confronting a domestic waste crisis. As the world's largest waste-generating nation, the World Economic Forum projects that by 2030, the volume of household waste in China will be double that of the United States. Starting in ... Show More
1h 7m
Yesterday
Sarah Hoiland, "Righteous Sisterhood: The Politics and Power of an All-Women's Motorcycle Club" (Temple UP, 2025)
A righteous sister identifies herself as a biker. She might wrench, or maintain, her own bike, and she prefers to ride with other righteous sisters. Righteous Sisterhood: The Politics and Power of an All-Women's Motorcycle Club (Temple UP, 2025) is Dr. Sarah Hoiland’s insightful ... Show More
44m 53s
Nov 19
Christina Jerne, "Opposition by Imitation: The Economics of Italian Anti-Mafia Activism" (U Minnesota Press, 2025)
For more than 150 years, Italy has been home to a resilient and evolving resistance against the pervasive influence of mafias. While these criminal organizations are renowned for their vast international business enterprises, the collective actions taken to oppose them are less k ... Show More
56m 40s
Mar 2023
Raina Lipsitz, "The Rise of a New Left: How Young Radicals Are Shaping the Future of American Politics" (Verso, 2022)
The mushrooming rolls of the Democratic Socialists of America, Marxist explainers in Teen Vogue, and the outsized impact of the youngest woman ever elected to Congress, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, all herald a new, youth-inflected radical politics.
The Rise of a New Left: How Youn ... Show More
37m 7s
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
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
Jun 2020
Leticia Bode et al., "Words That Matter: How the News and Social Media Shaped the 2016 Presidential Campaign" (Brookings, 2020)
Words That Matter: How the News and Social Media Shaped the 2016 Presidential Campaign (Brookings Institution Press, 2020) comes out of a broader collaboration between social scientists at the University of Michigan, Georgetown University, Gallup, Inc.
This collaboration, which i ... Show More
1h 1m
Aug 2023
Ramzi Fawaz, "The New Mutants: Superheroes and the Radical Imagination of American Comics" (NYU Press, 2016)
Today’s guest is Ramzi Fawaz, the Romnes Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Published by NYU Press in 2016, The New Mutants: Superheroes and the Radical Imagination of American Comics is his first book. In 2022, Ramzi published Queer Forms, for which he ... Show More
1h 23m
Sep 2021
Interview with Lauren Groff
In this week’s episode, Kendra talks with Lauren Groff about her book, Matrix, which is out now from Riverhead Books.
Check out our Patreon page to learn more about our book club and other Patreon-exclusive goodies. Follow along over on Instagram, join the discussion in our Goodr ... Show More
34m 29s
Jul 2022
Summer books: why escapist fiction is good for you
As summer sizzles in the northern hemisphere, this episode brings you top recommendations for books to pack on your vacation, and reading that will transport you far from home without you having to go anywhere. Laura Battle, Deputy Books Editor at the Financial Times, gives her b ... Show More
23m 4s