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Recall This Book
Recall This Book December 7, 2023

Violent Majorities: Indian and Israeli Ethnonationalism (Episode 1 of 3)

A Discussion with Balmurli Natrajan (with Lori Allen and Ajantha Subramanian)

Balmurli Natrajan, Lori Allen, and Ajantha Subramanian

Hosted by Elizabeth Ferry and John Plotz
"The Slippery Slope to a Multiculturalism of Caste" Professor Balmurli Natrajan has long studied questions of caste, nationalism and fascism in the Indian context: his many works include a 201 …

Recall This Book

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Free-ranging discussion of books from the past that cast a sideways light on today's world. Recall This Book is hosted by Elizabeth Ferry, Professor of Anthropology at Brandeis University and John Plotz, Barbara Mandel Professor of the Humanities at Brandeis University and co-founder of the Brandeis Educational Justice Initiative.

Recall This Book November 16, 2023

Laurence Ralph Reckons With Police Violence (EF, JP)

Laurence Ralph

Hosted by Elizabeth Ferry and John Plotz
Listen:
In the third episode of our Global Policing series, Elizabeth and John spoke back in 2020 with anthropologist Laurence Ralph about The Torture Letters: Reckoning with Police Violence (U Chicago Press …
Recall This Book November 2, 2023

"We are all latecomers": Martin Puchner's "Culture"

A Discussion with Martin Puchner

Martin Puchner

Hosted by Elizabeth Ferry and John Plotz
Listen:
Recall This Book listeners already know the inimitable Martin Puchner (Professor of English and Theater at Harvard, editor of more than one Norton Anthology, and author of many prizewinning books) …
Recall This Book October 19, 2023

Sanjay Krishnan on V. S. Naipaul

To Make the Deformation the Formation (JP)

Sanjay Krishnan

Hosted by Elizabeth Ferry and John Plotz
Listen:
John Plotz of Recall This Book spoke in 2020 with Sanjay Krishnan, Boston University English professor and Conrad scholar about his marvelous new book on that grumpiest of Nobel laureates …
Recall This Book October 5, 2023

John Guillory Professes Criticism (JP, Nick Dames)

John Guillory

Hosted by Elizabeth Ferry and John Plotz
Listen:
John Guillory (NYU English author of the pathbreaking Cultural Capital) is here to discuss his amazing new Professing Criticism: Essays on the Organization of Literary Study (U Chicago Press, 2022) He speaks …
Recall This Book September 21, 2023

January 6th and Asymmetrical Policing (JP, EF)

A Discussion with David Cunningham

David Cunningham

Hosted by Elizabeth Ferry and John Plotz
Listen:
Recall This Book first heard from the sociologist of American racism David Cunningham in Episode 36 Policing and White Power. Less than a week after the horrors of January 6th …
Recall This Book September 7, 2023

Earthsea, and Other Realms

Ursula Le Guin as Social Inactivist

John Plotz and Elizabeth Ferry

Hosted by Elizabeth Ferry and John Plotz
Listen:
To mark the publication of John's book Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea (My Reading), with Oxford University Press (2023), John and Elizabeth take to the airways to share their love of …
Recall This Book August 17, 2023

Neveryon and Beyond (JP)

A Discussion with Samuel R. Delany

Samuel R. Delany

Hosted by Elizabeth Ferry and John Plotz
Listen:
John Plotz talked with Samuel Delany, living legend of science fiction and fantasy back in 2019. You probably know him best for breakthrough novels like Dhalgren and Trouble on Triton …
Recall This Book August 3, 2023

Joshua Cohen’s "The Netanyahus" (JP, Eugene Sheppard)

Novel Dialogue Crossover

Joshua Cohen

Hosted by Elizabeth Ferry and John Plotz
Listen:
In this episode (originally aired by our partner Novel Dialogue) John and his Brandeis colleague Eugene Sheppard speak with Joshua Cohen about The Netanyahus. Is the 2021 novel a Pulitzer-winning …
Recall This Book July 20, 2023

Thomas Piketty On Capitalism and Inequality (Adaner Usmani, JP)

Thomas Piketty

Hosted by Elizabeth Ferry and John Plotz
Listen:
Is Thomas Piketty the world’s most famous economic historian ? A superstar enemy of plutocratic capitalism who wrote a pathbreaking bestseller, Capital in the 21st Century? Or simply a debonair …
Recall This Book July 5, 2023

Making Money

A Discussion with Christine Desan

Christine Desan

Hosted by Elizabeth Ferry and John Plotz
Listen:
Our Recall this Buck series, back in 2020 and 2021, explored the history of money, ranging from the earliest forms of labor IOUs to the modern world of bitcoin and …
Recall This Book June 15, 2023

The Electro-Library

A Discussion with Jared Green (EF, JP)

Jared Green

Hosted by Elizabeth Ferry and John Plotz
Listen:
Way back in 2019, Elizabeth and John were already thinking about collaboration. Here they speak with Jared Green and explore The Electro-Library, a podcast he co-created. Elizabeth, Jared and John …
Recall This Book June 1, 2023

Musical Collaboration

A Chat with Composer Francisco del Pino

Francisco del Pino

Hosted by Elizabeth Ferry and John Plotz
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Francisco del Pino is a widely celebrated composer from Buenos Aires, and currently a Ph.D. candidate in Music Composition at Princeton University. John fell in love with Francisco's music (during …
Recall This Book May 18, 2023

David Plotz: Books in Dark Times (JP)

David Plotz

Hosted by Elizabeth Ferry and John Plotz
Aside from being John’s (younger, suaver and beardier) brother, what has the inimitable David Plotz done lately? Only hosted “The Slate Political Gabfest“, written two books (“The Genius Factory” and …
Recall This Book May 4, 2023

Journalistic Collaboration (JP)

A Conversation Steve Fainaru and Mark Fainaru-Wada

Mark Fainaru-Wada and Steve Fainaru

Hosted by Elizabeth Ferry and John Plotz
Steve Fainaru and his brother Mark Fainaru-Wada wrote a bestselling and award-winning book (and accompanying PBS documentary series) about the NFL coverup of concussion trauma, League of Denial. This conversation …
Recall This Book April 20, 2023

Elizabeth Bradfield in Dark Times (JP)

Elizabeth Bradfield

Hosted by Elizabeth Ferry and John Plotz
For the RtB Books in Dark Times series back in 2021, John spoke with Elizabeth Bradfied, editor of Broadsided Press, poet, professor of creative writing at Brandeis, naturalist, photographer. Her …
Recall This Book April 6, 2023

Poetry, Observation, and Form

A Discussion with Sassan Tabatabai

Sassan Tabatabai

Hosted by Elizabeth Ferry and John Plotz
"For me, there is something so solid and comforting in stone" says Sassan Tabatabai in our conversation, and in his poem "Firestones" the words roll, weigh and satisfyingly click together …
Recall This Book March 9, 2023

Chris Walley on Deindustrialization (EF, JP)

Christine J. Walley

Hosted by Elizabeth Ferry and John Plotz
On a blustery fall morning back in 2019, RTB welcomed Christine Walley, anthropologist and author of Exit Zero: Family and Class in Postindustrial Chicago. In the early 1980s Chris’s father …
Recall This Book March 2, 2023

Nuclear Ghosts

A Discussion with Ryo Morimoto

Ryo Morimoto

Hosted by Elizabeth Ferry and John Plotz
John and Elizabeth, in this special Centennial episode of Recall this Book, explore spectral radiation with Ryo Morimoto, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University. His new book Nuclear Ghost …
Recall This Book February 16, 2023

Gael McGill Visualizes Intracellular Data (JP, GT)

Gael McGill

Hosted by Elizabeth Ferry and John Plotz
What’s actually going on in a cell–or on the spiky outside of an invading virus? Gael McGill, Director of Molecular Visualization at the Center for Molecular and Cellular Dynamics at …