Alexandra Hudson, "The Soul of Civility: Timeless Principles to Heal Society and Ourselves" (St. Martin's Press, 2023)
Alexandra Hudson, daughter of the "Manners Lady," was raised to respect others. But as she grew up, Hudson discovered a difference between politeness--a superficial appearance of good manners--and tru...
2 Nov 202330min
Gerard McCarthy, "Outsourcing the Polity: Non-State Welfare, Inequality, and Resistance in Myanmar" (Cornell UP, 2023)
In late 2015 Daw Aung San Suu Kyi led Myanmar’s National League for Democracy to a smashing general election victory. In one of her first public appearances since the win, Suu Kyi went to a roadside t...
1 Nov 202349min
Melvin L. Rogers, "The Darkened Light of Faith: Race, Democracy, and Freedom in African American Political Thought" (Princeton UP, 2023)
Frederick Douglass’s 1852 speech “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July” is notoriously fiery. No doubt part of what’s gripping about it is its internal tension. Douglass begins by sincerely praisin...
1 Nov 20231h 8min
The Future of Cancelling: A Conversation with Greg Lukianoff
Cancel culture is something all academics are aware of and some are concerned about. Certainly that’s true of Greg Lukianoff who was the co-author (with Jonathan Haidt) of The Coddling of the America...
1 Nov 202336min
Paolo Sandro, "The Making of Constitutional Democracy: From Creation to Application of Law" (Bloomsbury, 2022)
This book is a tour de force. In The Making of Constitutional Democracy: From Creation to Application of Law (Bloomsbury, 2022), Dr Paolo Sandro explores the assumed unproblematic tension between the ...
1 Nov 20231h 10min
Woodrow Wilson: Patrick Weil’s "The Madman in the White House"
In this episode of International Horizons, RBI director John Torpey interviews Patrick Weil, author of The Madman in the White House: Sigmund Freud, Ambassador Bullitt, and the Lost Psychobiography of...
31 Okt 202340min
On Wars: A Discussion with Michael Mann
“Irrationality rules” in war, Michael Mann writes in his magisterial 2023 book, On Wars (Yale UP, 2023), a history that begins with the Roman Republic and ancient China and works its way through the w...
31 Okt 202352min
Dara Z. Strolovitch, "When Bad Things Happen to Privileged People: Race, Gender, and What Makes a Crisis in America" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
A deep and thought-provoking examination of crisis politics and their implications for power and marginalization in the United States. From the climate crisis to the opioid crisis to the Coronavirus ...
31 Okt 20231h 3min
