Myth and Identity in the Martial Arts: Creating the Dragon (Lexington Books, 2025) is a study of the role of myth and ideology in the formation of social identity, focusing on a variety of communities of practice involving the martial arts in East Asian and Western history. Alexus McLeod argues that myths of the martial arts should not be understood as “fa ... Show More
Yesterday
The Roma: A Travelling History
The word Roma conjures images of free-spirited nomads, creative and easy-going people who choose to eschew social conformity for personal independence and a life on the road. Few know the Roma’s long history of being harassed, expelled, deported, demonized, enslaved, and murdered ... Show More
45m 44s
Jul 7
Judith Scheele, "Shifting Sands: A Human History of the Sahara" (Basic Books, 2025)
What comes to mind when we think about the Sahara? Rippling sand dunes, sun-blasted expanses, camel drivers and their caravans perhaps. Or famine, climate change, civil war, desperate migrants stuck in a hostile environment. The Sahara stretches across 3.2 million square miles, h ... Show More
1h 8m
Jul 6
Margaret Cook Andersen, "Fertile Expectations: The Politics of Involuntary Childlessness in Twentieth-Century France" (Manchester UP, 2025)
An engaging history of motherhood, demography, and infertility in twentieth-century France, Fertile expectations: The politics of involuntary childlessness in twentieth-century France (Manchester University Press, 2025) by Dr. Margaret Andersen explores fraught political and cult ... Show More
45m 35s
Aug 2021
Eliza Ablovatski, "Revolution and Political Violence in Central Europe: The Deluge of 1919" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
In the wake of the First World War and Russian Revolutions, Central Europeans in 1919 faced a world of possibilities, threats, and extreme contrasts. Dramatic events since the end of the world war seemed poised to transform the world, but the form of that transformation was uncle ... Show More
1h 2m
Jul 2019
Katharina Karcher, "Sisters in Arms: Militant Feminisms in the Federal Republic of Germany since 1968" (Berghahn, 2017)
In her new book, Sisters in Arms: Militant Feminisms in the Federal Republic of Germany since 1968 (Berghahn, 2017), Katharina Karcher Lecturer in German at the University of Birmingham, examines a critical time in the history and development of the feminist movement in Germany. ... Show More
55m 24s
Aug 2024
Nazis in Egypt and Spain's La Tomatina
A warning, this programme includes an account of antisemitic views and descriptions of violence.Egypt recruited thousands of Nazis after World War Two to bolster its security. We hear from Frank Gelli, who in 1964 met Hitler's former propagandist, Johann von Leers, in Cairo. Auth ... Show More
51m 9s
Jan 2024
Jelena Subotić, "Yellow Star, Red Star: Holocaust Remembrance after Communism" (Cornell UP, 2019)
In her new book Yellow Star, Red Star: Holocaust Remembrance after Communism (Cornell University Press, 2019) Jelena Subotić asks why Holocaust memory continues to be so deeply troubled―ignored, appropriated, and obfuscated―throughout Eastern Europe, even though it was in those l ... Show More
50m 8s
Nov 2024
Russian army experiences bloodiest month of the entire war
Day 997.Today, we assess the state of the Russian army, hear new revelations from inside the Biden administration, and look deeper at the impact of this war in other theatres, such as Korea and Africa.
Contributors:Francis Dearnley (Assistant Comment Editor). @FrancisDearnley on ... Show More
59m 18s
Dec 2024
Samuel Hodgkin, "Persianate Verse and the Poetics of Eastern Internationalism" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
At the height of literary nationalisms in the twentieth century, leftist internationalists from Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, India, and the Soviet East bonded over their shared love of the classical Persian verses of Hafiz and Khayyam. At writers' congresses and in communist litera ... Show More
1h 2m