In March 1953 and May 1955, government officials—including the Federal Civil Defense Administration (FCDA), the US Department of Defense, and the Atomic Energy Commission—released nuclear bombs on two model towns at Nevada Test Site, the continental nuclear test facility during the Cold War. These so-called “Doom Towns” were designed to illustrate in the mos ... Show More
Mar 2025
Tom Lynch, "Outback and Out West: The Settler-Colonial Environmental Imaginary" (U Nebraska Press, 2022)
People make sense of the world through stories, and stories about places inevitably shape how we treat, live on, and use those places. In Outback and Out West: The Settler Colonial Environmental Imaginary (U Nebraska Press, 2022), emeritus professor of English at the University o ... Show More
1h 4m
Jul 4
Jonathan L. Friedmann, "Chai Noon: Jews and the Cinematic Wild West" (U Wisconsin Press, 2025)
Only a few Westerns contain explicitly Jewish stories or themes, and very rarely do Old West tales involve identifiably Jewish characters. Yet Jewish contributors have shaped the Western—once Hollywood's most popular genre—ever since the silent era, both onscreen and offscreen, a ... Show More
1h 11m
Jun 18
173* Novel Dialogue Crossover: Aaron Gwyn goes West (Sean McCann, JP)
RTB's sister podcast, Novel Dialogue, spoke recently with Aaron Gwyn. He is the author of four novels: The World Beneath, Wynne’s War, and, most recently, two wonderfully linked historical novels, All God’s Children, which won the Oklahoma Book award, and The Cannibal Owl. In his ... Show More
47m 17s
Mar 2026
Maurice Rafael Magaña, "Cartographies of Youth Resistance: Hip-Hop, Punk, and Urban Autonomy in Mexico" (U California Press, 2020)
In Cartographies of Youth Resistance: Hip-Hop, Punk, and Urban Autonomy in Mexico (U California Press, 2020), based on a decade of ethnographic fieldwork, Maurice Magaña considers how urban and migrant youth in Oaxaca embrace subcultures from hip-hop to punk and adopt creative or ... Show More
1h 4m
Mar 2020
Kristen Hoerl, "Bad Sixties: Hollywood Memories of the Counterculture, Antiwar, and Black Power Movements" (UP of Mississippi, 2018)
On this episode of the New Books Network, Dr. Lee Pierce (she/they)--Asst. Prof. of Rhetoric and Communication at the State University of New York at Geneseo--interviews Kristen Hoerl (she/hers) on her impressive new book The Bad Sixties: Hollywood Memories of the Counterculture, ... Show More
57m 20s
Jan 2025
Adrian de Leon, "Bundok: A Hinterland History of Filipino America" (UNC Press, 2023)
In a book that pulls together both sides of the Pacific, Bundok: A Hinterland History of Filipino America (UNC Press, 2023) asks the question: what if we look at Filipino history not from the cities or the imperial metropoles, but from the mountains and the countryside? Or put an ... Show More
1h 12m
Aug 2022
An Enemy Such As This: Live in Gallup
<p>Red Nation comrade Melanie Yazzie hosts this live event exploring the life and legacy of Larry Casuse, featuring Ursula C. Carillo, Erika Casuse, author David Correia, and a musical performance by <a href="https://www.facebook.com/jj.otero.art/">JJ Otero</a>.</p> <p><br /> Rea ... Show More
1h 21m
May 2021
Our History Is the Future: The Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance
Listen to the full episode of Guerrilla History here: https://guerrillahistory.libsyn.com/nick-estes In this episode of Guerrilla History, we bring on professor, activist, and author Nick Estes to talk to us about the long history of American indigenous resistance. The conversat ... Show More
1h 23m
Dec 2014
Joseph D. Hankins, “Working Skin: Making Leather, Making a Multicultural Japan” (U of California Press, 2014)
Joseph D. Hankins‘s marvelous new ethnography of the contemporary Buraku people looks at the labor involved in “identifying, dismantling, and reproducing” the Buraku situation in Japan and beyond. Taking readers on a journey from Lubbock, Texas to Tokyo, India, and back again, Wo ... Show More
1h 9m
Apr 2024
A beautiful day in the (old) neighborhood
<p>Journalist Ray Suarez joins the pod to discuss immigration, ethnic identity, assimilation, old neighborhoods, and his new book We Are Home: Becoming American in the 21st Century-An Oral History.</p>
<p>Read an excerpt of the book on the Cracks in PoMo Substack</p>
<p>and order ... Show More
41m 53s
Aug 2019
Jennifer C. Lena, "Entitled: Discriminating Tastes and the Expansion of the Arts" ( Princeton UP, 2019)
How did American elites change the meaning of Art? In Entitled: Discriminating Tastes and the Expansion of the Arts (Princeton University Press, 2019), Jennifer C. Lena, associate professor of arts administration at Colombia University, charts the history of American arts and cul ... Show More
36m 12s