Politics & Society

June 17, 2026

Legacy of the Ancient Greeks

American democracy is in a period of crisis, so it seems natural to look back to its origins. So here in Episode 10 of Season 5, I interview Professor…

June 17, 2026

In this episode of the Language on the Move Podcast, Ingrid Piller speaks with Frank Stahnisch, Professor of the History of Medicine and Health Care a…

June 17, 2026

Meiji Graves in Happy Valley

The connections between Hong Kong and Japan began much earlier than most would imagine. Yet, it is only now that the historic Japanese community in H…

June 17, 2026

Always Carry Salt

I had the privilege of speaking with writer Samantha Ellis about her deeply moving new book, Always Carry Salt: A Memoir of Preserving Language and Cu…

June 17, 2026

Saving Utopia

There is no alternative. The End of History. Climate Apocalypse. It seems that our contemporary moment is defined by the idea that things can only…

June 17, 2026

Audio and Ideas

This is a special edition of the New York Institute for the Humanities’ Vault podcast. On May 13, 2026, Princeton’s Center for Human Values hosted a d…

June 16, 2026

Inventing Nadar

Félix Nadar took the first aerial photograph in 1858, so the story goes. The evidence, Emily Doucet notes, is mixed. In Inventing Nadar: A History of …

June 16, 2026

Staging Blackface in Canada

In the early twentieth century, as variety shows flooded Canadian stages, new forms of blackface, inspired by modern forms of amusements, changed the …

June 16, 2026

It Is Not Enough to Survive

Jesse Montgomery joins Michael Stauch to discuss It Is Not Enough to Survive: The Young Patriots Story (UNC Press, 2026). They examine how young white…

June 16, 2026

Doctoral Supervision Across Boundaries

What does doctoral supervision actually look like in contemporary academia? In this NBN episode, Fredrik Saxegaard discusses the open-access book Doc…

June 15, 2026

Managing Maritime Risk in Early Modern Europe

Commercial seafaring, both dangerous and with large amounts of capital at stake, was the source of the risk-management institutions that still und…

June 15, 2026

Queer Making

Karl Whittington joins Jana Byars to talk about his new book, Queer Making: On Artists and Desire in Medieval Europe (Pennsylvania State University Pr…

June 15, 2026

Ethnographic Reflections on Marriage in Dhofar, Oman

In this episode of the New Books Network, we explore Ethnographic Reflections on Marriage in Dhofar, Oman (Anthem Press, 2026), with anthropologist Dr…

June 15, 2026

The Death and Life of Southern Soviet Cities

What does it mean, three decades after the demise of the USSR, to inhabit cities built for a future that has never arrived? In pursuit of the q…

June 14, 2026

Can Robots Love God and Be Saved?

One of the things that stood out in my conversation with John Longhurst about his book Can Robots Love God and Be Saved? A Journalist Reports on Faith…

June 14, 2026

A Popular History of Idi Amin's Uganda

Idi Amin ruled Uganda between 1971 and 1979, inflicting tremendous violence on the people of the country. How did Amin's regime survive for eight …

June 14, 2026

For Better and Worse

Marriage rates have fallen dramatically since the 1970s. Yet far from devaluing marriage, people still overwhelmingly describe marriage as the highest…

June 14, 2026

The Politics of Islamic Ethics

Fundamental to Islamic thought is the idea that there is a way that human beings simply are, by nature or creation. This concept is called fiṭra. In T…

June 14, 2026

A Polish Girl in Siberia

A memoir of a child’s forced relocation to Siberia under Stalin’s Gulag system reveals the potential for true human kindness in the face of extraordin…

June 13, 2026

When Metaphysics Meets Biology

Central to modern biology and the study of life is the concept of the organism—roughly, a body with interconnected parts that make specific contributi…