Today
The Information State: How is the State Surveilling and Manipulating us These Days?
In this episode of International Horizons, RBI Acting Director Eli Karetny interviews Jacob Siegel, writer, Army veteran, and author of The Information State. Siegel traces how military information operations, post‑9/11 surveillance programs, and Silicon Valley’s rise converged t ... Show More
54m 19s
Apr 6
Ho-fung Hung, "The China Question: Eight Centuries of Fantasy and Fear" (Cambridge UP, 2026)
"The contempt and naive idealization of China are two sides of the same coin. The latter cannot be an antidote to the former." So argues Ho-Fung Hung in the conclusion of The China Question: Eight Centuries of Fantasy and Fear (Cambridge University Press, 2026). For centuries, We ... Show More
1h 12m
Today
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
Sep 2024
Lynn M. Tesser, "Rethinking the End of Empire: Nationalism, State Formation, and Great Power Politics" (Stanford UP, 2024)
Why did a nation-state order emerge when nationalist activism was usually an elitist pursuit in the age of empire? Ordinary inhabitants and even most indigenous elites tended to possess religious, ethnic, or status-based identities rather than national identities. Why then did th ... Show More
53m 47s
Nov 2024
Harvey Whitehouse, "Inheritance: The Evolutionary Origins of the Modern World" (Harvard UP, 2024)
Each of us is endowed with an inheritance--a set of evolved biases and cultural tools that shape every facet of our behavior. For countless generations, this inheritance has taken us to ever greater heights: driving the rise of more sophisticated technologies, more organized reli ... Show More
44m 17s
Jul 2020
Katherine Stewart, "The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism" (Bloomsbury, 2020)
For too long the Religious Right has masqueraded as a social movement preoccupied with a number of cultural issues, such as abortion and same-sex marriage.
In her deeply reported investigation, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism, Katherine S ... Show More
1h 1m
Feb 2025
Miles Glendinning, "Mass Housing: Modern Architecture and State Power – a Global History" (Bloomsbury, 2021)
Mass Housing: Modern Architecture and State Power – a Global History (Bloomsbury, 2021) is a major work that provides the first comprehensive history of one of modernism's most defining and controversial architectural legacies: the 20th-century drive to provide 'homes for the peo ... Show More
1h 17m
Sep 2023
Kevin Funk, "Rooted Globalism: Arab–Latin American Business Elites and the Politics of Global Imaginaries" (Indiana UP, 2022)
Triumphant capitalism has in our time engendered a new global class that lives and works in a borderless world, beyond the reach of national politics or sovereign power. Or has it? In Rooted Globalism: Arab-Latin American Business Elites and the Politics of Global Imaginaries (In ... Show More
55m 41s
Feb 2025
Alisse Waterston, "My Father's Wars: Migration, Memory, and the Violence of a Century" (Routledge, 2024)
On the podcast today I am joined by Presidential Scholar and Professor Emerita of Anthropology at John Jay College, City University of New York, Alisse Waterston to talk about her award-winning book, My Father’s Wars: Migration, Memory, and the Violence of A Century (Routledge, 2 ... Show More
1h 14m
Feb 2025
Alisse Waterston, "My Father's Wars: Migration, Memory, and the Violence of a Century" (Routledge, 2024)
On the podcast today I am joined by Presidential Scholar and Professor Emerita of Anthropology at John Jay College, City University of New York, Alisse Waterston to talk about her award-winning book, My Father’s Wars: Migration, Memory, and the Violence of A Century (Routledge, 2 ... Show More
1h 14m
Oct 2025
World War II: Part 1 - World War I
<p>World War II didn’t appear out of nowhere. Dr. Roy begins by going back to the 18th and 19th centuries, explaining how the rise of the British Empire, the exploitation of India, the discovery of oil, and the unification of Germany set the stage for catastrophe. Along the way, ... Show More
1h 50m
Apr 2025
Agnieszka Pasieka, "Living Right: Far-Right Youth Activists in Contemporary Europe" (Princeton UP, 2024)
Radical nationalism is on the rise in Europe and throughout the world. Living Right: Far-Right Youth Activists in Contemporary Europe (Princeton University Press, 2024) provides an in-depth account of the ideas and practices that are driving the varied forms of far-right activism ... Show More
44m 29s
Apr 2024
Loren D. Lybarger, "Palestinian Chicago: Identity in Exile" (U California Press, 2020)
Chicago is home to one of the largest, most politically active Palestinian immigrant communities in the United States. For decades, secular nationalism held sway as the dominant political ideology, but since the 1990s its structures have weakened and Islamic institutions have gai ... Show More
1h 21m
The current rise of nationalism across the globe is a reminder that we are not, after all, living in a borderless world of virtual connectivity. In Nationalism: A World History (Princeton UP, 2024), historian Eric Storm sheds light on contemporary nationalist movements by exploring the global evolution of nationalism, beginning with the rise of the nation-st ... Show More
