Scott Reich, "One Day in September: Baseball, Brotherhood, and the Birth of the All-Star Game" (Compass Rose, 2026)
On a crisp September afternoon in 1917, as the country waged war and the national pastime faced questions about its purpose, baseball paused to reconsider what it stood for. At Fenway Park, the game's...
30 Jun 52min
Shawn William Miller, "Dream Road to Pan America: A Century in Pursuit of the World's Longest Highway" (U California Press, 2026)
A century after the Pan-American Highway was first conceived, its story remains largely unknown—even to the hundreds of motorists who annually attempt the 30,000-kilometer drive from far northern A...
29 Jun 40min
Caste and Music with T.M. Krishna
This episode features a conversation with Carnatic vocalist, T.M. Krishna, who is also the author of two books on this musical tradition. We began with his first book’s account of the modernization of...
29 Jun 1h 9min
Dallas Liddle, "News Machines: The Systems of Daily Journalism in Britain, 1785–1885" (Oxford UP, 2026)
British daily newspapers transformed rapidly at the turn of the nineteenth century, ballooning in size and radically reorganizing staffing and production decade by decade. By mid-century, newspaper...
29 Jun 52min
Juxuan Zhang and Pierre-Yves Donzé, "Entrepreneurs and the Structural Transformation of the Chinese Apparel Industry, 1980–2020" (Journal of Evolutionary Studies in Business, 2026)
In this interview I met with Dr. Juxuan Zhang (Osaka University) to discuss her research on the history of the Chinese apparel industry since 1979. Her paper with Prof Pierre-Yves Donzé (Osaka Univers...
29 Jun 32min
Susannah Crockford, "A Perturbed System: Religion and Climate Change from the End of a World" (U Chicago Press, 2026)
Our ecological system is disturbed, and with it, every other system we’ve built to inhabit it. We do not face inevitable destruction, yet many of us cannot conceive of climate change as anything but t...
29 Jun 48min
Ryan Angulo and Doug Crowell, "Kindness & Salt: Recipes for the Care & Feeding of Your Friends & Neighbors" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018)
When Brooklyn restaurateurs Doug Crowell and Ryan Angulo opened Buttermilk Channel in Carroll Gardens in 2008, they created more than a restaurant—they built a neighborhood institution. Known for dish...
29 Jun 41min
Christopher de Bellaigue, "The Golden Throne: The Curse of a King" (Bodley Head, 2025)
What does a 16th century ruler reveal about the nature of power, past and present? Istanbul, 1538. The greatest of the Ottoman Sultans is at the pinnacle of world power, while his family and future a...
29 Jun 46min
