Today
Tamara Kay, "Sesame Street Around the World: Culture, Politics, and Transnational Organizational Partnerships" (Oxford UP, 2025)
Given the sometimes extraordinary politicization of culture, it is surprising that Sesame Street has gained acceptance and legitimacy in more than fifty countries. Sesame Street's global success raises two questions. First, how does a US icon like Sesame Street spread around the ... Show More
45m 46s
Yesterday
Michael James Roberts et al., "Roll and Flow: The Cultural Politics of Skateboarding and Surfing" (San Diego State UP, 2024)
In Roll and Flow: The Cultural Politics of Skateboarding and Surfing (San Diego State UP, 2024), Michael James Roberts, Kristin Lawler, and David P. Cline take the widespread participation of skateboarders and surfers in the Black Lives Matter movement as a catalyst to reconsider ... Show More
1 h
Mar 5
The Vet at the End of the Earth: Adventures with Animals in the South Atlantic
The role of a resident vet in the remote islands of the Falklands, St. Helena, Ascension, and Tristan da Cunha encompasses many wonderful complexities: caring for the world’s oldest living land animal (a 200-year-old giant tortoise, denizen of the St. Helena governor’s lawn); pur ... Show More
59m 47s
Oct 2023
Chrissy Yee Lau, "New Women of Empire: Gendered Politics and Racial Uplift in Interwar Japanese America" (U Washington Press, 2022)
This episode, which is co-hosted with Mika Thornburg, features a conversation with Dr. Chrissy Yee Lau, the author of the newly published New Women of Empire: Gendered Politics and Racial Uplift in Interwar Japanese America (U Washington Press, 2022). The book centers the compell ... Show More
56m 21s
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
Aug 2023
Michael R. Jin, "Citizens, Immigrants, and the Stateless: A Japanese American Diaspora in the Pacific" (Stanford UP, 2021)
This episode features a conversation with Dr. Michael R. Jin regarding his recently published book Citizens, Immigrants, and the Stateless: The Japanese American Diaspora in the Pacific. Published in November 2021 by Stanford University Press, the book weaves together Jin’s speci ... Show More
1h 7m
Sep 2024
Japanese in America: Railroads, Internment Camps & Little Tokyo
<p>When the US turned to Japan looking for workers in the late 19th Century, they probably never foresaw that one day soon they would imprison those who arrived, their successors, and their families, en masse in camps around America.</p><br><p>To hear about the Japanese American ... Show More
50 m
Dec 2018
Kellie Jones, "South of Pico: African American Artists in the 1960s and 1970s" (Duke UP, 2017)
New York City might have been the epicenter of the twentieth century American art scene, but Los Angeles was no slouch either, writes Kellie Jones in South of Pico: African American Artists in the 1960s and 1970s(Duke University Press, 2017). Dr. Jones, Professor of Art History a ... Show More
49m 8s
Apr 2021
Christopher Joby, "The Dutch Language in Japan (1600-1900): A Cultural and Sociolinguistic Study of Dutch as a Contact Language in Tokugawa and Meiji Japan" (Brill, 2020)
In The Dutch Language in Japan (1600-1900): A Cultural and Sociolinguistic Study of Dutch as a Contact Language in Tokugawa and Meiji Japan (Brill, 2020), Christopher Joby offers the first book-length account of the knowledge and use of the Dutch language in Tokugawa and Meiji Ja ... Show More
50m 16s
Aug 2024
Season 3, Episode 10: Jean Dong, Chinese Statecraft in a Changing World
Send a textPlease join Professor Jeffrey Sachs and China expert, Jean Dong as they discuss Dong’s fascinating book, Chinese Statecraft in a Changing World: Demystifying Enduring Traditions and Dynamic Constraints. Ms. Dong offers a rich and subtle historical perspective on China’ ... Show More
40m 34s
In her new book, Born to Lose: The Misfits Who Made Dog Day Afternoon (Headpress, 2026) film historian Rachel Walther draws on extensive archival research delving into the film’s backstory, tracing how an unbelievable true crime tale of love, bank robbery, and LGBTQI+ activism became a box-office smash and catapulted a group of Brooklyn outsiders into the me ... Show More
