Apr 22
The Crisis of American Political Economy: On the New Conservative Policy Agenda with Chris Griswold
In this sixth episode of Season 5, I interview Mr. Chris Griswold. An alum of Wheaton College and Princeton Theological Seminary, he was formerly a senior advisor to then Senator Marco Rubio, and is currently the Policy Director for American Compass—a leading center-right public ... Show More
1h 14m
Apr 9
The Coroner’s Silence: Death Records and the Hidden Victims of Police Violence
Each year, police officers kill over 1,000 people they’ve sworn to protect and serve. While some cases, like George Floyd’s and Sandra Bland’s, capture national attention, most victims remain nameless, their stories untold. The Coroner’s Silence: Death Records and the Hidden Vict ... Show More
57m 50s
Apr 8
Thorsten Gromes, "Sustaining Peace After Civil War: Insights from 48 Recent Cases" (Springer, 2026)
Sustaining Peace After Civil War: Insights from 48 Recent Cases (Springer, 2026) examines one of the most important questions in peace research: What leads to enduring peace after civil wars, and what leads to the resurgence of violence? For decades, intrastate conflicts have be ... Show More
41m 8s
Jul 2024
Amanda McMillan Lequieu, "Who We Are Is Where We Are: Making Home in the American Rust Belt" (Columbia UP, 2024)
Half a century ago, deindustrialization gutted blue-collar jobs in the American Midwest. But today, these places are not ghost towns. People still call these communities home, even as they struggle with unemployment, poverty, and other social and economic crises. Why do people re ... Show More
41m 40s
Oct 2024
Lisa-Jo K. Van den Scott, "Walled-In: Arctic Housing and a Sociology of Walls" (Lexington Book, 2024)
Walls profoundly shape the spaces we live in and the places we move through, impinge on our everyday lives, and entangle power relations, identity, and hierarchies. Walled-In: Arctic Housing and a Sociology of Walls (Lexington Books, 2024) explores these effects in the context of ... Show More
53m 30s
Sep 2024
Sharon M. Quinsaat, "Insurgent Communities: How Protests Create a Filipino Diaspora" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
When people migrate and settle in other countries, do they automatically form a diaspora? In Insurgent Communities: How Protests Create a Filipino Diaspora (U Chicago Press, 2024), Sharon M. Quinsaat explains the dynamic process through which a diaspora is strategically construct ... Show More
55m 59s
Feb 2024
Youjin B. Chung, "Sweet Deal, Bitter Landscape: Gender Politics and Liminality in Tanzania's New Enclosures" (Cornell UP, 2024)
During the “global land grab” of the early twenty-first century, legions of investors rushed to Africa to acquire land to produce and speculate on agricultural commodities. In Sweet Deal, Bitter Landscape: Gender Politics and Liminality in Tanzania's New Enclosures (Cornell UP, 2 ... Show More
52m 4s
Feb 2024
Matthew Wolf-Meyer and Denielle A. Elliott, "Naked Fieldnotes: A Rough Guide to Ethnographic Writing (U Minnesota Press, 2024)
Ethnographic research has long been cloaked in mystery around what fieldwork is really like for researchers, how they collect data, and how it is analyzed within the social sciences. Naked Fieldnotes: A Rough Guide to Ethnographic Writing (U Minnesota Press, 2024), a unique compe ... Show More
50m 43s
Jun 2024
Mónica M. Salas Landa, "Visible Ruins: The Politics of Perception and the Legacies of Mexico's Revolution" (U Texas Press, 2024)
The Mexican Revolution (1910–1920) introduced a series of state-led initiatives promising modernity, progress, national grandeur, and stability; state surveyors assessed land for agrarian reform, engineers used nationalized oil for industrialization, archaeologists reconstructed ... Show More
52m 7s
Apr 2024
Philipp Demgenski, "Seeking a Future for the Past: Space, Power, and Heritage in a Chinese City" (U Michigan Press, 2024)
In Seeking a Future for the Past: Space, Power, and Heritage in a Chinese City (U Michigan Press, 2024), Philipp Demgenski examines the complexities and changing sociopolitical dynamics of urban renewal in contemporary China. Drawing on ten years of ethnographic fieldwork in the ... Show More
1h 20m
Sep 2024
Eli Revelle Yano Wilson, "Handcrafted Careers: Working the Artisan Economy of Craft Beer" (U California Press, 2024)
Handcrafted Careers: Working the Artisan Economy of Craft Beer (U California Press, 2024) unpacks the problems and privileges of pursuing a career of passion by exploring work inside craft breweries.
As workers attempt new modes of employment in the era of the Great Resignation, ... Show More
49m 16s
Sep 2024
Eli Revelle Yano Wilson, "Handcrafted Careers: Working the Artisan Economy of Craft Beer" (U California Press, 2024)
Handcrafted Careers: Working the Artisan Economy of Craft Beer (U California Press, 2024) unpacks the problems and privileges of pursuing a career of passion by exploring work inside craft breweries.
As workers attempt new modes of employment in the era of the Great Resignation, ... Show More
49m 16s
Sep 2024
Ellen T. Meiser, "Making It: Success in the Commercial Kitchen" (Rutgers UP, 2024)
The restaurant industry is one of the few places in America where workers from lower-class backgrounds can rise to positions of power and prestige. Yet with over four million cooks and food-preparation workers employed in America’s restaurants, not everyone makes it to the high-s ... Show More
44m 54s
On an unseasonably warm October afternoon in Saint Paul, hundreds of people gathered to protest the construction of a proposed copper-nickel mine in the rural northern part of their state. The crowd eagerly listened to speeches on how the project would bring long-term risks and potentially pollute the drinking water for current and future generations. A year ... Show More
