In a unique and personal exploration of the game and fish laws in Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi from the Progressive Era to the 1930s, Julia Brock offers an innovative history of hunting in the New South. The implementation of conservation laws made significant strides in protecting endangered wildlife species, but it also disrupted traditional hunting p ... Show More
Jul 8
MA|DE, "ZZOO" (Anstruther Books, 2025)
In this episode, NBN host Hollay Ghadery interviews the artist collective MA|DE about their poetry collection, ZZOO (Anstruther Books, 2025). At a time when binaristic and hierarchical relations are being readily interrogated, MA|DE — a unity of two voices fused into a single, po ... Show More
34m 19s
Jun 29
Todd May "Should We Go Extinct?: A Philosophical Dilemma for Our Unbearable Times" (Crown, 2024)
These days it’s harder than ever to watch TV, scroll social media, or even just sit at home looking out of the window without contemplating the question at the heart of philosopher Todd May’s Should We Go Extinct?: A Philosophical Dilemma for Our Unbearable Times (Crown, 2024). F ... Show More
1h 2m
Jun 16
Barbara Allen, "Lost Animals, Disappearing Worlds: Stories of Extinction" (Reaktion, 2025)
Lost Animals, Disappearing Worlds: Stories of Extinction (Reaktion, 2025) by Reverend Barbara Allen presents thirty-one extinct species through the personal perspectives of those animals. This intimate approach not only highlights each species but explores the broader implication ... Show More
1h 7m
Oct 2020
I. Newkirk and G. Stone, "Animalkind: Remarkable Discoveries about Animals and Revolutionary New Ways to Show Them Compassion" (Simon and Schuster, 2020)
The founder and president of PETA, Ingrid Newkirk, and bestselling author Gene Stone explore the wonders of animal life and offer tools for living more kindly toward them. In the last few decades, a wealth of new information has emerged about who animals are—intelligent, aware, a ... Show More
49m 23s
Mar 2021
Alan Klima, "Ethnography #9" (Duke UP, 2019)
Alan Klima’s Ethnography #9 (Duke University Press, 2019) was co-written by a ghost. And that’s just the start of what’s going on in this eerie, singular book. It’s a discussion of finance in post-crash Thailand, a study of non-material histories, and an examination of the limits ... Show More
1h 4m
Feb 2021
Darwin's The Descent of Man (1871)
Matthew Sweet is joined by Xine Yao, Joe Cain, and Ruth Mace, who've been re-reading Charles Darwin's 1871 book The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex. The book offered a radical reinterpretation of what it means to be human by situating us completely within the nat ... Show More
44m 41s
Apr 2023
The Dark Reality Behind India’s Festival Elephants
Asian elephants have been captured and tamed by people in Southern Asia for thousands of years as war machines, beasts of burden, and part of religious festivals. It’s a practice that continues to this day, but some activists are beginning to rethink its impact on this endangered ... Show More
21m 8s
Jul 2023
Tom Mustill, "How to Speak Whale: A Voyage into the Future of Animal Communication" (Grand Central Publishing, 2022)
What if animals and humans could speak to one another? Tom Mustill—the nature documentarian who went viral when a thirty‑ton humpback whale breached onto his kayak—asks this question in his thrilling investigation into whale science and animal communication.“When a whale is in th ... Show More
53m 45s
Mar 2022
LINA MOUNZER | Writing about Lebanon | Conversations
Lina Mounzer talked about her career as a writer and translator. Lina’s work has appeared in the New York Times, the Paris Review, 1843, Literary Hub, and Bidoun, as well as in the anthologies Hikayat: An Anthology of Lebanese Women’s Writing (Telegram Books: 2007) and Tales of T ... Show More
25m 45s
May 2022
LAILA LALAMI | The Other American & The Moor's Account | Conversations
Laila Lalami talked about her award-winning books, The Other American, The Moor’s Account, Secret Son, Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits & Conditional Citizens.Laila Lalami was born in Rabat and educated in Morocco, Great Britain, and the United States. She is the author of five ... Show More
56m 16s