Yesterday
Natalia Rogach Alexander, "Growing People: The Enduring Legacy of John Dewey" (Columbia UP, 2025)
John Dewey is among history’s most celebrated thinkers on democracy and education, yet he has often been underappreciated and misunderstood as a philosopher. This book paints a fresh portrait of Dewey as not only a reformer of schooling but also a profound theorist of human devel ... Show More
51m 37s
May 20
Thomas Doherty, "How Film Became History: The Rise of the Archival Documentary in 1930s America" (Columbia UP, 2026)
By the 1930s, filmmakers had access to a backlog of footage from nearly forty years of motion pictures, allowing them to create a new kind of film stitched together from the raw material of older films. At around the same time, the transition to synchronous sound added a transfor ... Show More
38m 14s
May 16
Ayşehan Jülide Etem, "Film Diplomacy: A Media History of Turkey-US Relations" (Columbia UP, 2026)
Film Diplomacy: A Media History of Turkey-US Relations (Columbia UP, 2026) offers a powerful new account of how film shaped international relations and national identity. Drawing on previously unexamined and recently declassified archives in Turkey and the United States, Ayşehan ... Show More
55m 35s
Aug 2023
Emilia Bachrach, "Religious Reading and Everyday Lives in Devotional Hinduism" (Oxford UP, 2022)
Religious texts are not stable objects, passed down unchanged through generations. The way in which religious communities receive their scriptures changes over time and in different social contexts. Emilia Bachrach's Religious Reading and Everyday Lives in Devotional Hinduism (Ox ... Show More
45m 43s
Oct 2022
869: Dharmic Reversals / An Interview with Dr. Ravi M. Gupta
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Kaustubha discusses with Professor Ravi Gupta about the unique role of Srimad Bhagavatam in the broader yoga tradition, and how it presents "Dharmic Reversals" where common religious, social hierarchies (in terms of gender, age, caste and even species) are turned upside-down ... Show More
59m 53s
Sep 2023
Kerry P. C. San Chirico. "Between Hindu and Christian: Khrist Bhaktas, Catholics, and the Negotiation of Devotion in Banaras" (Oxford UP, 2022)
On the second Saturday of each month, on the outskirts of the ancient city of Varanasi, Shiva's own city, thousands of shudra and Dalit devotees worship Yesu (Jesus) at a Catholic ashram. In an open-air pavilion more than three thousand women and men alternately sit, stand, and s ... Show More
53m 40s
Apr 2020
C. Baker and P. Phongpaichit, "From the Fifty Jātaka: Selections from the Thai Paññāsa Jātaka" (Silkworm Books, 2019)
The Jātaka tales, or stories of the Buddha’s previous lives as a bodhisatta, are included in the Pāli Canon and have for centuries been a rich source of inspiration in Theravada Buddhism. In addition to these classical Jātaka, a number of other non-canonical Jātaka tales emerged ... Show More
1h 22m
Today I talked to Ravi Gupta and Kenneth Valpey about The Bhagavata Purana: Sacred Text and Living Tradition (Columbia UP, 2013)
A vibrant example of living literature, the Bhagavata Purana is a versatile Hindu sacred text written in Sanskrit verse. Finding its present form by the tenth century C.E., the work inspired several major north Indian devotional (b ... Show More
