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
Today
Isabel Heger-Laube, "China’s Landless Peasants and the Role of State-led Rural Urbanization: Narratives, Meaning Making, and the Puzzle of Social Stability" (Würzberg UP, 2025)
As part and parcel of China’s compressed modernization, processes of state-led rural urbanization through land expropriation and rural-to-urban relocation have been transforming rural Chinese people’s lives in unprecedented ways. This has led to different, often adverse outcomes ... Show More
1h 16m
May 3
Arely M. Zimmerman, "Contentious Citizenship: Salvadoran Activism and Belonging Across Borders" (U Arizona Press, 2026)
Contentious Citizenship: Salvadoran Activism and Belonging Across Borders (U Arizona Press, 2026) reshapes how we understand belonging, identity, and political participation in the context of migration. Drawing on decades of Salvadoran activism from the 1980s solidarity movement ... Show More
23m 24s
Apr 2023
Cristina Mejia Visperas, "Skin Theory: Visual Culture and the Postwar Prison Laboratory" (NYU, 2022)
An abolitionist approach to STS and the history of the life sciences: this is the model that Cristina Mejia Visperas offers in her book, Skin Theory: Visual Culture and the Postwar Prison Laboratory (NYU 2022). By now, scientists’ experiments on captive men at Philadelphia’s Holm ... Show More
56m 32s
Jun 2021
Do Beauty Standards Need A Glow Up? with David Yi
This week on Getting Curious, Jonathan and David Yi explore the history of beauty beyond the gender binary. Listen in to learn about Neanderthals who used highlighters, Korean warriors who invented three-in-one sticks, ancient Egyptians who relied on anti-aging creams, and more s ... Show More
50m 50s
Jun 2021
Does perfect skin really exist?
There are YouTube tutorials, magazine columns, and entire online communities dedicated to finding the “perfect skin care routine.” But what we consider to be “perfect” skin is rooted in racist, sexist and ageist ideas. So what do we need to do to protect this amazing organ that i ... Show More
34m 34s
Nov 2022
Beauty costs: A spotlight on skin lightening
Products that claim to lighten skin are often physically harmful, often containing toxic chemicals and dangerous ingredients. We look at why skin lightening products still exist, speak to people affected by their messaging, and find out why stopping sales is not as simple as it m ... Show More
17m 30s
Aug 2024
Ep 250: Unpacking “Beauty Blindness” & How Stress Affects Our Skin
“Beauty Blindness” Viral Trend
TikTok loves a good trend, and this week, Hannah & Mel are diving into the latest: “Blush Blindness.” But let’s be real—haven’t we all been “blind” to a few beauty faux pas in our past? From overplucking brows to over-zealous blush application, the ... Show More
31m 20s
Dec 2021
Meet the Dermatologists Changing Their Field
Many skin conditions, from rashes to Lyme disease to various cancers, present differently on dark skin. Yet medical literature and textbooks don't often include those images, pointing to a bigger problem in dermatology. Today on the show, we take a close look at how the science o ... Show More
14m 16s
May 2023
How K-Beauty Revolutionized Skincare — And Became Obsessed with Perfection
When NPR host Elise Hu moved to South Korea to be an international correspondent, she ended up getting a crash course on Korean beauty and the country's billion-dollar cosmetics industry. She explains the rise of the industry, its appeal, and the high standards it sets for appear ... Show More
27m 49s
Through a creative focus on skin, in Experiments in Skin: Race and Beauty in the Shadows of Vietnam (Duke UP, 2021), Thuy Linh Nguyen Tu examines the ongoing influence of the Vietnam War on contemporary ideas about race and beauty. Framing skin as the site around which these ideas have been formed, Tu foregrounds the histories of militarism in the production ... Show More
