logo
episode-header-image
Oct 7
49m 48s

To Exist as a Problem: Being Black, Bein...

Marshall Poe
About this episode
In the first pages of The Souls of Black Folk, W. E. B. Du Bois meditates on the question, "How does it feel to be a problem?" In this profound response to that question, Zahi Zalloua endeavours to think through the shared Black and Palestinian experience of being racialized as a problem. Zalloua argues that today's anti-Blackness is not a lingering feat ... Show More
Up next
Apr 2026
Manuel Barcia, "Pirate Imperialism: Trade, Abolition, and Global Suppression of Maritime Raiding, 1825–1870" (Yale UP, 2026)
In the middle decades of the nineteenth century, imperial powers around the world came into direct confrontation with local resistance in the form of maritime raiding. From the Atlantic basin to the western Mediterranean Sea, the Persian Gulf and the east coast of Africa, and Sou ... Show More
38m 52s
Oct 7
Think of England: Nation, People, and Race in the English Imagination with Paul Kléber Monod (Cambridge UP, 2026)
What is the basis of English national identity? How has this changed over time, and what is its future? Tracing the history of English identity over more than 2,000 years, Think of England: Nation, People, and Race in the English Imagination (Cambridge UP, 2026) explores how bei ... Show More
1h 7m
Oct 6
Strung Up: How White America Learned to Lynch Black Children with Stacey Patton (Beacon Press, 2026)
A powerful, unsettling, and unflinching exploration that forces readers to confront lynching as a devastating legacy of white childhood conditioning, and to reckon with the corrupting force of a system that trained children to become its willing executioners, Strung Up: How White ... Show More
56m 44s
Recommended Episodes
May 2023
66 | What's Left of Equality? Between Opportunity and Flourishing
<p>In this episode, we unpack tensions between theories of equality that emphasize opportunity and outcomes in a discussion based upon Christine Sypnowich’s recent <em>Boston Review </em>article, “Is Equal Opportunity Enough?” We also discuss our very own William Paris’s response ... Show More
1 h
Nov 2023
Nancy Lindisfarne and Jonathan Neale, "Why Men?: A Human History of Violence and Inequality" (Hurst, 2023)
How did humans, a species that evolved to be cooperative and egalitarian, develop societies of enforced inequality? Why did our ancestors create patriarchal power and warfare? Did it have to be this way? These are some of the key questions that Dr. Nancy Lindisfarne and Dr. Jonat ... Show More
1h 14m
Feb 2022
32 | What is Equality? Disagreeing with Jacques Rancière
<p>In this episode we discuss the meaning of equality by delving into French political philosopher Jacques Rancière’s 1995 book, <em>Disagreement</em>. In a contentious conversation we unpack the core concepts of the book, including its expansive notion of the police and its high ... Show More
1h 5m
Jun 2024
Emma Heaney, "Feminism Against Cisness" (Duke UP, 2024)
The contributors to Feminism Against Cisness (Duke UP, 2024) showcase the future of feminist historical, theoretical, and political thought freed from the conceptual strictures of cisness: the fallacy that assigned sex determines sexed experience. The essays demonstrate that this ... Show More
46m 56s
Sep 2023
Michèle Lamont, "Seeing Others: How Recognition Works-And How It Can Heal a Divided World" (Atria, 2023)
How can we challenge and change inequalities? In Seeing Others: How Recognition Works— and How It Can Heal a Divided World (Atria, 2023), Michele Lamont, Professor of Sociology and African and African American Studies and the Robert I. Goldman Professor of European Studies, at Ha ... Show More
36m 53s
Jan 2023
How to recognize privilege – and uplift those without it | Mariam Veiszadeh
Depending on your lot in life, you may see the status quo as a result of unearned privilege or a simple reflection of merit. Backed by statistics and personal stories, lawyer Mariam Veiszadeh offers a much-needed perspective check on the quasi-equality touted in business today, c ... Show More
12m 53s
Jun 2025
Solidarity
Laurie Taylor is joined by Jennifer Chudy, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Wellesley College, Boston, who discusses her pioneering exploration of racial sympathy. She looks at the reasons why racial inequality in America prompts distress amongst some white people, but ... Show More
28m 11s
May 2023
Eva Haifa Giraud, "What Comes After Entanglement?: Activism, Anthropocentrism, and an Ethics of Exclusion" (Duke UP, 2019)
By foregrounding the ways that human existence is bound together with the lives of other entities, contemporary cultural theorists have sought to move beyond an anthropocentric worldview. Yet as Eva Haifa Giraud contends in What Comes After Entanglement?: Activism, Anthropocentri ... Show More
38m 22s
Sep 2024
Our 10,000-year quest for equality
Were hunter-gatherer societies among the most equal in history? What impact did the French and American Revolutions have on the concept of equality? And has equality been on the retreat over the past three decades? Darrin M McMahon, author of Equality: The History of an Elusive I ... Show More
34m 40s