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Religion
Religion May 28, 2023

The Women’s Mosque of America

Authority and Community in US Islam

Tazeen M. Ali

Hosted by Joseph Stuart
The Women’s Mosque of America (WMA), a multiracial, women-only mosque in Los Angeles, is the first of its kind in the United States. Since 2015, the WMA has provided a …

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Interviews with scholars of religion about their new books.

Biblical Studies May 28, 2023

Armageddon

What the Bible Really Says about the End

Bart D. Ehrman

Hosted by Frances Sacks
A New York Times bestselling Biblical scholar, reveals why our popular understanding of the Apocalypse is all wrong—and why that matters.You’ll find nearly everything the Bible has to say about the …
Medieval History May 27, 2023

Stories Between Christianity and Islam

Saints, Memory, and Cultural Exchange in Late Antiquity and Beyond

Reyhan Durmaz

Hosted by Zalman Newfield
In Stories between Christianity and Islam: Saints, Memory, and Cultural Exchange in Late Antiquity and Beyond (University of California Press, 2022), Reyhan Durmaz offers an original and nuanced understanding of …
Christian Studies May 27, 2023

A Revolutionary Faith

Liberation Theology Between Public Religion and Public Reason

Raúl E. Zegarra Medina

Hosted by Adrian Guiu
Religious commitments can be a powerful engine for progressive social change. In A Revolutionary Faith: Liberation Theology Between Public Religion and Public Reason (Stanford UP, 2023), Raúl E. Zegarra examines the …
Islamic Studies May 26, 2023

Broken

The Failed Promise of Muslim Inclusion

Evelyn Alsultany

Hosted by Kristian Petersen
In Broken: The Failed Promise of Muslim Inclusion (NYU Press, 2022), Evelyn Alsultany, Professor at the University of Southern California, argues that, even amid challenges to institutionalized Islamophobia, diversity initiatives …
Secularism May 26, 2023

Empire and Progress in the Victorian Secularist Movement

Imagining a Secular World

Patrick J. Corbeil

Hosted by Carrie Lynn Evans
Empire and Progress in the Victorian Secularist Movement: Imagining a Secular World (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022) by Dr. Patrick Corbeil is the first extensive historical analysis of the relationship between empire …
Nomads, Past and Present May 22, 2023

Embracing Landscape

Living with Reindeer and Hunting among Spirits in South Siberia

Selcen Küçüküstel

Hosted by Maggie Freeman
Examining human-animal relations among the reindeer hunting and herding Dukha community in northern Mongolia, Embracing Landscape: Living with Reindeer and Hunting among Spirits in South Siberia (Berghahn Books, 2021), focuses …
Religion May 21, 2023

Conspirituality

How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Public Health Threat

Derek Beres, Matthew Remski, and Julian Walker

Hosted by Blair Hodges
Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Public Health Threat (PublicAffairs, 2023) is a much-needed analysis of wellness, new age, and yoga influencers who’ve gone down the rabbit hole …
Interpretive Political and Social Science May 18, 2023

Freedom Inside?

Yoga and Meditation in the Carceral State

Farah Godrej

Hosted by Nick Cheesman
Are meditation and yoga offered to prisoners merely to have them acquiesce to being incarcerated and degraded? Or can they help prisoners interrogate the political and social structures that incarcerate …
Japanese Studies May 16, 2023

Church Space and the Capital in Prewar Japan

Garrett L. Washington

Hosted by Nathan Hopson
Garrett Washington’s Church Space and the Capital in Prewar Japan (Hawai’i 2022) brings a fresh perspective to the question of Protestant Christianity’s outsized influence in modernizing Japan from almost the …
Religion May 14, 2023

The Politics of Religious Literacy

Education and Emotion in a Secular Age

Justine Ellis

Hosted by Zalman Newfield
Religious Literacy has become a popular concept for navigating religious diversity in public life. In The Politics of Religious Literacy: Education and Emotion in a Secular Age (Brill, 2022), Justine …
Indian Religions May 11, 2023

A Conversation with Ramdas Lamb

Ramdas Lamb

Hosted by Raj Balkaran
A candid conversation with Ramdas Lamb about his experiences as a sadhu, his journey to academia and his professorial pedagogy. Ramdas Lamb received a Bachelor of Arts degree with high …
Early Modern History May 11, 2023

An Artful Relic

The Shroud of Turin in Baroque Italy

Andrew R. Casper

Hosted by Morteza Hajizadeh
In 1578, a fourteen-foot linen sheet bearing the faint bloodstained imprint of a human corpse was presented to tens of thousands of worshippers in Turin, Italy, as one of the …
Almost Good Catholics May 11, 2023

The Miraculous Mind (with Paul Bloom)

What Does Psychology Say about Religion and Morality?

Paul Bloom

Hosted by Krzysztof Odyniec
Psychologist Paul Bloom and I talk about the human brain, morality, empathy, perversity, all the things—including Professor Bloom’s new book, Psych: The Story of the Human Mind (Ecco Press, 2023) …
Jewish Studies May 11, 2023

Living with the Law

Gender and Community Among the Jews of Medieval Egypt

Oded Zinger

Hosted by Drora Arussy
Living with the Law: Gender and Community Among the Jews of Medieval Egypt (U Pennsylvania Press, 2023) explores the marital disputes of Jews in medieval Islamic Egypt (1000-1250), relating medieval gossip …
Ancient History May 10, 2023

The Scent of Ancient Magic

Britta K. Ager

Hosted by Miranda Melcher
Magic was a fundamental part of the Greco-Roman world. Curses, erotic spells, healing charms, divination, and other supernatural methods of trying to change the universe were everyday methods of coping …
Anthropology May 8, 2023

Between Heaven and Russia

Religious Conversion and Political Apostasy in Appalachia

Sarah Riccardi-Swartz

Hosted by Kendall Dinniene
How is religious conversion transforming American democracy? In one corner of Appalachia, a group of American citizens has embraced the Russian Orthodox Church and through it Putin’s New Russia. Historically …
Early Modern History May 6, 2023

Reformation in the Low Countries, 1500-1620

Christine Kooi

Hosted by Douglas Bell
In this new history of the Reformation in the Netherlands, Christine Kooi synthesizes fifty years of scholarship provide a broad general history of the Low Countries in the sixteenth century …
Islamic Studies May 5, 2023

Rebuilding Community

Displaced Women and the Making of a Shia Ismaili Muslim Sociality

Shenila Khoja-Moolji

Hosted by SherAli Tareen
In her moving, sophisticated, and analytically groundbreaking new book Rebuilding Community: Displaced Women and the Making of a Shia Ismaili Muslim Sociality (Oxford UP, 2023), Shenila Khoja-Moolji recounts and engages …
Almost Good Catholics May 4, 2023

People of the Book

What Muslims and Christians Share (and Don’t Share) in Common

Munir Sheikh

Hosted by Krzysztof Odyniec
I talk with a Muslim friend about the places that Islam and Christianity overlap, and also the places where they diverge. Of these subjects, none is more interesting than the …