Ho-fung Hung, "The China Question: Eight Centuries of Fantasy and Fear" (Cambridge UP, 2026)
"The contempt and naive idealization of China are two sides of the same coin. The latter cannot be an antidote to the former." So argues Ho-Fung Hung in the conclusion of The China Question: Eight Ce...
6 Apr 1h 12min
Alex Diamond, "Governing the Excluded: Rural Livelihoods Beyond Coca in Colombia's Peace Laboratory" (U Chicago Press, 2026)
The Colombian village of Briceño might, at first glimpse, look like many communities in the rural Global South. Many of the people living there rely on small-scale farming, even as a newly constructed...
6 Apr 1h 4min
Kristina Jonutytė, "Between the Buddha and the New Tsar: Urban Religion and Minority Politics at the Asian Borderlands of Russia" (Cornell UP, 2026)
Between the Buddha and the New Tsar: Urban Religion and Minority Politics at the Asian Borderlands of Russia (Cornell UP, 2026) by Dr. Kristina Jonutytė is an ethnography of contemporary urban Buddhis...
1 Apr 1h 2min
Caste and Tech with Murali Shanmugavelan and Sareeta Amrute
This episode features a conversation with Murali Shanmugavelan and Sareeta Amrute about how caste structures IT workspaces and communication infrastructures. We began with their reflections on how the...
30 Mars 1h 6min
Derek Krueger "Monastic Desires: Homoeroticism, Homophobia, and the Love of God in Medieval Constantinople" (Cambridge UP, 2026)
Derek Krueger Monastic Desires: Homoeroticism, Homophobia, and Love of God in Medieval Constantinople (Cambridge UP, 2026) The Byzantine Abbot Symeon the New Theologian (949–1022) transgressed the ho...
30 Mars 1h 28min
Kristin Ciupa, "The Political Economy of Oil in Venezuela: Class Conflict, the State, and the World Market" (Brill, 2026)
The Political Economy of Oil in Venezuela: Class Conflict, the State, and the World Market (Brill, 2026) is the latest book from Dr. Kristin Ciupa, Associate Professor of Sociology at the University ...
29 Mars 37min
Zheng Liu, "Cultural Mavericks: The Business and Politics of Independent Bookselling in China" (Columbia UP, 2026)
In recent decades, self-proclaimed “independent bookstores” have arisen across China. In the West, such retailers represent an alternative to corporations and chains. In China, by contrast, they diffe...
28 Mars 1h
Thomas Hegghammer and Diego Gambetta eds., "Fight, Flight, Mimic: Identity Mimicry in Conflict" (Oxford UP, 2024)
Time spent and words spent—what does each signal? Deceptive mimicry—the manipulation of individual or group identity—includes passing off as a different individual, as a member of a group to which on...
28 Mars 1h 5min
