Godzilla emerged from the sea to devastate Tokyo in the now-classic 1954 film, produced by Tōhō Studios and directed by Ishirō Honda, creating a global sensation and launching one of the world’s most successful movie and media franchises. Awakened and transformed by nuclear weapons testing, Godzilla serves as a terrifying metaphor for humanity’s shortsighted ... Show More
Yesterday
Tara Lohan, "Undammed: Freeing Rivers and Bringing Communities to Life" (Island Press, 2025)
Undammed: Freeing Rivers and Bringing Communities to Life (Island Press, 2025) is not Tara’s first book, she authored one at age eight. From their she followed her passion to become an accomplished environmental journalist, initially as a graduate student in literary non-fiction, ... Show More
36m 35s
Jan 19
Malcolm Harris, "Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World" (Little, Brown, 2023)
Palo Alto is nice. The weather is temperate, the people are educated, rich, healthy, enterprising. Remnants of a hippie counterculture have synthesized with high technology and big finance to produce the spiritually and materially ambitious heart of Silicon Valley, whose products ... Show More
1h 1m
Jan 18
Laurie Parsons, "Carbon Colonialism: How Rich Countries Export Climate Breakdown" (Manchester UP, 2023)
Climate change is devastating the planet, and globalisation is hiding it. Laurie Parsons's book Carbon Colonialism: How Rich Countries Export Climate Breakdown (Manchester UP, 2023) opens our eyes. Around the world, leading economies are announcing significant progress on climate ... Show More
44m 38s
Mar 2024
Keir Starmer, Monster and Reading Genesis reviewed
Labour leader Keir Starmer joins to discuss his party's new arts strategy, which he unveiled this morning, aiming to boost access to the arts and grow the creative industries.Writer and theologian Professor Tina Beattie and critic and broadcaster Matthew Sweet review Marilynne Ro ... Show More
42m 20s
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
Oct 2023
Ben Whaley, "Toward a Gameic World: New Rules of Engagement from Japanese Video Games" (U Michigan Press, 2023)
Ben Whaley’s Toward a Gameic World: New Rules of Engagement from Japanese Video Games (U Michigan Press 2023) examines the pathbreaking engagement strategies of four Japanese video games produced between 2002 and 2015. Each of these “persuasive games” deploys a distinct strategy ... Show More
47m 21s
Jul 2022
Japanese Literature in WWII
Today we’re talking about the 1930s and 40s in Japan—fascism, World War Two, and the American Occupation.In particular, how did 20 years of censorship shape Japanese literature?We're also taking a look at the life and work of Akiyuki Nosaka, whose novella, "Grave of the Fireflies ... Show More
41m 21s
