Joanna Lillis, "Silk Mirage: Through the Looking Glass in Uzbekistan" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
In September 2016, Islam Karimov–the first president of a post-Soviet Uzbekistan–died, at age 78. His death ended an oppressive dictatorship that had governed the Central Asian country for decades, wh...
19 Helmi 51min
Kenneth Lowande, "False Front: The Failed Promise of Presidential Power in a Polarized Age" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
False Front: The Failed Promise of Presidential Power in a Polarized Age The University of Chicago Press, 2024 Kenneth Lowande Political Scientist Kenneth Lowande (University of Michigan) has a new...
19 Helmi 44min
Trump, the UN Charter, and the Strange Politics of International Law
International law scholars are often among the sharpest critics of the Trump administration—but what if the usual story misses something essential? In this episode, RBI interim director Eli Karetny sp...
17 Helmi 1h 4min
Lisa Björkman, "Drama of Democracy: Political Representation in Mumbai" (U Minnesota Press, 2025)
In Drama of Democracy: Political Representation in Mumbai (U Minnesota Press, 2025), Lisa Björkman invites our attention to political form and how they allow us to appreciate the various mediums throu...
17 Helmi 1h 22min
How Corporate Lobbyists are Capturing EU Institutions
Brussels is full of lobbyists. Over decades, big companies have been using their financial might not only to influence EU policies but even to shape how EU institutions are designed and what their key...
16 Helmi 33min
Alexis Lerner, "Post-Soviet Graffiti: Free Speech in Authoritarian States" (U Toronto Press, 2025)
Post-Soviet Graffiti: Free Speech in Authoritarian States (University of Toronto Press, 2025) is an empirically grounded ethnographic study of how graffiti and street art can be used as a political to...
16 Helmi 46min
Nadine Gordimer: “Living in South Africa’s Interregnum” James Lecture, October 14, 1982
In today’s episode from the Vault, we revisit Nadine Gordimer’s James Lecture on the political landscape of South Africa, presented at the New York Institute for the Humanities on October 14, 1982. I...
15 Helmi 1h 9min
Himanshu Prabha Ray ed., "Recentering Southeast Asia: Politics, Religion and Maritime Connections" (Routledge, 2026)
Recentering Southeast Asia: Politics, Religion and Maritime Connections (Routledge, 2026) assesses the impact of European colonization in the late 19th and early 20th century in ‘restructuring’ the sh...
15 Helmi 1h 4min
