Eric Hoffer's "The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements" (1951): A Discussion with Jay Garfinkel
A stevedore on the San Francisco docks in the 1940s, who eventually taught at the University of California at Berkeley, Eric Hoffer wrote philosophical treatises in his spare time while living in the ...
14 Aug 32min
Bordering On Indifference: Immigration Agents Negotiating Race and Morality
Immigration agents have a frontline view of the racial, economic, and legal inequalities that undocumented migration reflects—and yet most agents do not think of the role their jobs play in those ineq...
13 Aug 51min
Dalit Studies with Ramnarayan Rawat, K. Satyanarayana and Sanal Mohan
This episode featured a conversation with Ramnarayan Rawat, K. Satyanarayana, and Sanal Mohan, three scholars in the burgeoning field of Dalit Studies. We began with the significance of the 1990s as a...
10 Aug 1h 7min
Margaret E. Farrar and Adam Kaul, "Becoming Utopia: History, Heritage, and Sustainability in the American Midwest" (U Nebraska Press, 2026)
Becoming Utopia: History, Heritage, and Sustainability in the American Midwest (U Nebraska Press, 2026) centers on the tiny community of Bishop Hill, Illinois, whose marketing materials call it “Utopi...
9 Aug 36min
The Microbiopolitics of Novel Foods
What role do microbes play in aquaponic farming and cultivated meat production, and how might such novel food technologies impact microbiomes? In this episode, Ishita Dey of Gastronomica hosts Lukáš S...
7 Aug 0s
Nozomi Naoi, "The Land of Happiness: How the Japanese Department Store Visualized Modern Life" (MIT Press, 2026)
The Land of Happiness: How the Japanese Department Store Visualized Modern Life (MIT Press, 2026) explores the far-reaching influence of the Japanese department store on modern life and our imaginat...
4 Aug 43min
Magdalena E. Stawkowski, "Atomic Collective: Radioactive Life in Kazakhstan" (U Toronto Press, 2025)
In the aftermath of the Soviet Union's collapse, Kazakhstan inherited the remnants of one of the world's most contaminated landscapes: the Semipalatinsk Test Site, known locally as the Polygon. Resign...
3 Aug 56min
Eric O Silva, "Contested Realities and Identity Destigmatization: Identity Construction in the Culture Wars" (De Gruyter, 2026)
Much scholarship has sought to decode the polarization of American culture. Eric O Silva's analysis of the public discourse on contested realities (immigration, vaccines, electric vehicles, transgende...
2 Aug 42min
