For more than 150 years, Italy has been home to a resilient and evolving resistance against the pervasive influence of mafias. While these criminal organizations are renowned for their vast international business enterprises, the collective actions taken to oppose them are less known. In Opposition by Imitation: The Economics of Italian Anti-Mafia Activism ( ... Show More
Nov 20
Ivan Franceschini et al., "Scam: Inside Southeast Asia's Cybercrime Compounds" (Verso Books, 2025)
“If I had been enslaved for a year or two, I might not be able to believe in humanity any more.” “I am a victim of modern slavery.”
These chilling words come from a Taiwanese female lured by a fake job offer, only to be sold into a scam compound in Cambodia. She is not alone. Sh ... Show More
50m 32s
Nov 19
Carl Benedikt Frey, "How Progress Ends: Technology, Innovation, and the Fate of Nations" (Princeton UP, 2025)
In How Progress Ends: Technology, Innovation, and the Fate of Nations (Princeton University Press, 2025), Carl Benedikt Frey challenges the conventional belief that economic and technological progress is inevitable. For most of human history, stagnation was the norm, and even tod ... Show More
54m 29s
Nov 18
Vanessa S. Williamson, "The Price of Democracy: The Revolutionary Power of Taxation in American History" (Basic Books, 2025)
Americans have always fought over the meaning of freedom and equality. What is not commonly recognized is that the battles most pivotal in defining our democracy, from the framing of the Constitution to the decades-long backlash to the civil rights movement, hinged on one issue—t ... Show More
53m 49s
Oct 2021
Robert Hellyer, "Green with Milk and Sugar: When Japan Filled America's Tea Cups" (Columbia UP, 2021)
Robert Hellyer’s Green with Milk and Sugar: When Japan Filled America's Tea Cups (Columbia UP, 2021) is a tale of American and Japanese teaways, skillfully weaving together stories of Midwesterners drinking green tea (with milk and sugar, to be sure), the recent and complex origi ... Show More
44m 25s
Feb 2024
Season 3, Episode 4: Dr. David Daokui Li, China's World View: Demystifying China to Prevent Global Conflict
Join Professor Jeffrey Sachs and economist David Daokui Li as they discuss Professor Li’s brilliant new book, China's World View: Demystifying China to Prevent Global Conflict. Listen in as Professor Li explains the deep nature of Chinese politics and economics – based on Ch ... Show More
38m 4s
Aug 2024
The Dragon and the Nguzunguzu
Nguzunguzu is the traditional figurehead which was formerly affixed to canoes in the Solomon Islands. In this episode, Julie Yu-Wen Chen talks to Rodolfo Maggio, a senior researcher at the University of Helsinki about his book project on the dragon and the nguzunguzu, namely the ... Show More
20m 8s
Dec 2023
June Hee Kwon, "Borderland Dreams: The Transnational Lives of Korean Chinese Workers" (Duke UP, 2023)
Migration is a theme intertwined with hopes and dreams. In Borderland Dreams: The Transnational Lives of Korean Chinese Workers (Duke UP, 2023), June Hee Kwon explores the trajectory of the “Korean dream” that has fueled the massive migration of Korean Chinese workers from the Ya ... Show More
1 h
Oct 2022
Political Deification in South Asia
How can we understand the processes through which political leaders, god-men, stars of all kinds, and big or small deities mingle together in the public sphere? And what are the consequences of deifying politicians, or opening politics to the gods?
In this episode, we discuss Sou ... Show More
33m 50s
Feb 2024
Much ado about matcha, with Victoriya Toma
Our hosts Tiffany Eslick and Devina Divecha get a Japanese tea masterclass from Victoriya Toma. Victoriya is the founder of Ikigai-cha, where they focus on single estates and single cultivators, so they work and source from small farmers directly to bring their teas to the region ... Show More
1h 2m
Oct 2024
Xiaoming Wang, "Muslim Chinese: The Hui in Rural Ningxia" (de Gruyter, 2019)
As the predominantly Muslim Chinese who claim ancestry from Persian and Arabic-speaking regions in Central Asia and the Middle East, the Hui people in China have received relatively little attention in anthropology. According to the 2010 census, the Hui are the largest Muslim gro ... Show More
46m 25s
Sep 2013
Noodle narratives; British men dancing Capoeira
Noodle narratives - Laurie Taylor talks to US anthropologist, Deborah Gewertz, about the invention, production and consumption of instant ramen noodles. From their origins in Japan to their worldwide spread to markets as diverse as the USA and Papua New Guinea. As popular with th ... Show More
28m 11s
Oct 2024
Xiaoming Wang, "Muslim Chinese: The Hui in Rural Ningxia" (de Gruyter, 2019)
As the predominantly Muslim Chinese who claim ancestry from Persian and Arabic-speaking regions in Central Asia and the Middle East, the Hui people in China have received relatively little attention in anthropology. According to the 2010 census, the Hui are the largest Muslim gro ... Show More
46m 25s