Minxin Pei, "The Sentinel State: Surveillance and the Survival of Dictatorship in China" (Harvard UP, 2024)
Rising prosperity was supposed to bring democracy to China, yet the Communist Party’s political monopoly endures. How? Minxin Pei looks to the surveillance state. Though renowned for high-tech repress...
1 Jul 202536min
Jack Snyder, "Human Rights for Pragmatists: Social Power in Modern Times" (Princeton UP, 2024)
Human rights are among our most pressing issues today. But rights promoters have reached an impasse in their effort to achieve rights for all. Human Rights for Pragmatists (Princeton University Press,...
30 Jun 202546min
Amogh Dhar Sharma, "The Backstage of Democracy: India's Election Campaigns and the People Who Manage Them" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
About the Book Over the last decade, election campaigns in India have undergone a dramatic shift. Political parties increasingly rely on political consulting firms, social media volunteers, pollsters...
29 Jun 20251h 26min
Bryan D. Jones, The Southern Fault Line: How Race, Class, and Region Shaped One Family's History" (Oxford UP, 2025)
The Southern Fault Line: How Race, Class, and Region Shaped One Family's History (Oxford University Press, 2025) explores the under-appreciated division in the South between the oligarchic rule of pla...
27 Jun 202556min
How do Small States Navigate and Shape the Liberal World Order? A conversation with Dylan Loh
Globally, the liberal international order has been under pressure for quite some time, but we often tend to discuss this in relation to big international players such as the United States and China. B...
26 Jun 202535min
The May 2025 Mid-Term Elections in the Philippines
Today’s episode focuses on the mid-term elections in the Philippines which were held in May of this year, including all local elected positions, all seats in the House of Representatives, and twelve o...
25 Jun 202547min
Yaroslav Hrytsak, "Ukraine: The Forging of a Nation" (PublicAffairs, 2024)
When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the world witnessed the “creative, freewheeling, darkly humorous, and deeply resilient society” that is contemporary Ukraine. In this timely and original history, ...
25 Jun 20251h 18min
Nicole Watts, "Republic of Dreams: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Struggles, and the Future of Iraqi Kurdistan" (NYU Press, 2025)
Nicole F. Watts's Republic of Dreams: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Struggles, and the Future of Iraqi Kurdistan (NYU Press, 2025) is a harrowing portrait of Iraqi Kurdistan and its history, as it we...
24 Jun 202547min
