Ecological crises threaten all forms of life on earth. Democracy too is endangered, as popular discontent, elite malfeasance, and unresponsive institutions imperil its survival. Present political concepts have proven inadequate to meeting these challenges, and their inadequacies are themselves symptoms of the failures of prevailing political, cultural, and e ... Show More
Jun 11
Elizabeth Suzanne Kassab, "Contemporary Arab Thought: Cultural Critique in Comparative Perspective" (Columbia UP, 2025)
In the last third of the twentieth century, the Arab intellectual and political scene polarized between totalizing doctrines—nationalist, Marxist, and religious—and radical critique. Arab thinkers were reacting to the disenchanting experience of postindependence and a widespread ... Show More
29m 16s
May 28
Jessica X. Zu, "Just Awakening: Yogācāra Social Philosophy in Modern China" (Columbia UP, 2025)
Just Awakening: Yogācāra Social Philosophy in Modern China (Columbia University Press, 2025) uncovers a forgotten philosophy of social democracy inspired by Yogācāra, an ancient, nondualistic Buddhist philosophy that claims everything in the perceptible cosmos is mere consciousne ... Show More
1h 28m
May 21
Christopher Hanscom, "Impossible Speech: The Politics of Representation in Contemporary Korean Literature and Film" (Columbia UP, 2024)
How does art engage with its social context? What does 'the politics of art' even mean? In his new book Impossible Speech: The Politics of Representation in Contemporary Korean Literature and Film (Columbia University Press, 2023), Christopher P. Hanscom takes on these questions ... Show More
1h 11m
Feb 2025
Jaqueline Berndt, "The Cambridge Companion to Manga and Anime" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
In recent years, manga and anime have attracted increasing scholarly interest beyond the realm of Japanese studies. This Companion takes a unique approach, committed to exploring both the similarities and differences between these two distinct but interrelated media forms. Firmly ... Show More
44 m
Apr 2024
Shiamin Kwa, "Perfect Copies: Reproduction and the Contemporary Comic" (Rutgers UP, 2023)
Analyzing the way that recent works of graphic narrative use the comics form to engage with the “problem” of reproduction, Shiamin Kwa’s Perfect Copies: Reproduction and the Contemporary Comic (Rutgers UP, 2023) reminds us that the mode of production and the manner in which we pe ... Show More
49m 11s
Jun 2017
David Kushner, “Rise of the Dungeon Master: Gary Gygax and the Creation of D and D” (Nation Books, 2017)
Rise of the Dungeon Master: Gary Gygax and the Creation of D and D (Nation Books, 2017) by David Kushner and illustrated by Koren Shadmi is a gorgeous depiction of the late E. Gary Gygax’s life and times. Gygax’s story and the tale of D and D’s genesis is ideally suited to the gr ... Show More
23m 9s
May 2022
Susan Westhafer Furukawa, "The Afterlife of Toyotomi Hideyoshi: Historical Fiction and Popular Culture in Japan" (Harvard UP, 2022)
Popular representations of the past are everywhere in Japan, from cell phone charms to manga, from television dramas to video games to young people dressed as their favorite historical figures hanging out in the hip Harajuku district. But how does this mass consumption of the pas ... Show More
41 m
Oct 2024
L'art des livres | Osamu Tezuka, le dieu du manga.
Bienvenue pour ce nouvel épisode mensuel de l'Art des Livres, pour lequel je suis accompagné de Johan, alias Doz (du podcast PCF Mangas) dans lequel nous allons explorer un pan de la littérature qui me tient à cœur : le manga, à travers celui que l'on nomme le dieu du manga, Osam ... Show More
1h 22m
May 12
Between Two Rivers: Ancient Mesopotamia and The Birth of History | Dr Moudhy Al-Rashid
We sit down with Dr Moudhy Al-Rashid, author of "Between Two Rivers: Ancient Mesopotamia and The Birth of History" an honorary fellow at Wolfson College, University of Oxford. She takes us on an incredible journey through ancient Mesopotamia, exploring the region's rich history, ... Show More
1h 3m
Jan 2025
Fiction and the Fantastic: ‘The Thousand and One Nights’
The Thousand and One Nights is an ‘infinite text’; it has no fixed shape or length, no known author, and is transformed with each new translation. In this first episode of Fiction and the Fantastic, Marina Warner and Anna Della Subin explore two particularly mysterious stories in ... Show More
14m 41s
Oct 2024
The Other Ancient Civilisations: Interview with Raven Todd DaSilva
When we think of the ancient world, we tend to think of just a few societies: Egypt, Mesopotamia, and so on. But the more distant reaches of the past contained multitudes, and Raven Todd DaSilva has written a new book - The Other Ancient Civilisations - about some of them. I chat ... Show More
44m 14s