Infrastructure is essential to defining how the public functions, yet there is little public knowledge regarding why and how it became today's strongest global force over government and individual lives. Who should build and maintain infrastructures? How are they to be protected? And why are they all in such bad shape?
In Lifelines of our Society: A Global ... Show More
Oct 28
The Fog of Accountability: How Institutions Keep Voters from Holding Their Local Governments Accountable with Justin de Benedictis-Kessner (U Chicago Press, 2026)
In the United States, hundreds of thousands of elected and appointed officials serve more than 50,000 subnational governments, making important decisions about services ranging from education to infrastructure to policing. The provision of critical city services shapes citizens’ ... Show More
47m 48s
Oct 26
Carceral Utopia: A Global History of Model Prisons with Gregory Salle (Polity, 2026)
What underpins the legitimacy of the prison system in the twenty-first century? Despite numerous challenges and setbacks, there is still a widespread belief that prisons can be improved in a socially progressive way. Even today, 'model prisons' are being built that seek to fix th ... Show More
46m 38s
Oct 23
Outed: LBJ’s Confidant and the Arrest that Transformed a Presidency with Timothy Stewart-Winter (U Chicago Press, 2026)
Timothy Stewart-Winter joins Michael Stauch to discuss the arrest that transformed Lyndon Johnson’s presidency. In 1964, Lyndon B. Johnson’s longest-serving and most trusted advisor, Walter Jenkins, was arrested for soliciting sex in a YMCA bathroom near the White House. The scan ... Show More
53m 50s
Sep 2024
Max Hirsh and Till Mostowlansky, "Infrastructure and the Remaking of Asia" (U Hawaii Press, 2022)
In the twenty-first century, infrastructure has undergone a seismic shift from West to East. Once concentrated in Europe and North America, global infrastructure production today is focused squarely on Asia. Infrastructure and the Remaking of Asia (U Hawaii Press, 2022) investiga ... Show More
1h 3m
Jun 2024
Jennifer Hart on African Mobility and Infrastructure
Peoples & Things host Lee Vinsel talks to Jennifer Hart, Professor and Chair of the History Department at Virginia Tech, about her work on the history and ethnography of mobility and infrastructure in Ghana. Hart’s newest book, Making an African City: Technopolitics and the Infra ... Show More
1h 9m
Jun 2024
Kira Huju, "Cosmopolitan Elites: Indian Diplomats and the Social Hierarchies of Global Order" (Oxford UP, 2023)
Cosmopolitan Elites: Indian Diplomats and the Social Hierarchies of Global Order (Oxford University Press, 2023) by Dr. Kira Huju narrates the birth, everyday life, and fracturing of a Western-dominated global order from its margins. It offers a critical sociological examination ... Show More
1h 8m
Nov 2023
Charles S. Maier, "The Project-State and Its Rivals: A New History of the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries" (Harvard UP, 2023)
We thought we knew the story of the twentieth century. For many in the West, after the two world conflicts and the long cold war, the verdict was clear: democratic values had prevailed over dictatorship. But if the twentieth century meant the triumph of liberalism, as many intell ... Show More
50m 49s
Oct 2020
From Structures to Services: Improving Infrastructure Development in Latin America
In this episode of Building the Future, Tomás Serebrisky, Principal Economic Adviser at the Inter-American Development Bank’s Infrastructure and Energy Department, speaks with Dan about his recent book, From Structures to Services: The Path to Better Infrastructure in Latin Ameri ... Show More
28m 53s