Shows / The University of Chicago Press Podcast
The University of Chicago Press Podcast
Interviews with authors of University of Chicago Press books.
Episodes
- The University of Chicago Press Podcast
Caroline Jack, "Business as Usual: How Sponsored Media Sold American Capitalism in the Twentieth Century" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
Business as Usual: How Sponsored Media Sold American Capitalism in the Twentieth Century, (U Chicago Press, 2024) reveals how American capitalism has been…
- The University of Chicago Press Podcast
Lisa Vanhala, "Governing the End: The Making of Climate Change Loss and Damage" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
A searing account of how the international community is trying—and failing—to address the worst effects of climate change and the differential burdens borne by…
- The University of Chicago Press Podcast
Kate Epstein on How Twentieth-Century Technology Theft Built the National-Security State" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
In this episode I sit down with Kate Epstein, an associate professor of history at Rutgers University-Camden, as she details her research on the intersection…
- The University of Chicago Press Podcast
Ladelle McWhorter, "Unbecoming Persons: The Rise and Demise of the Modern Moral Self" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
How should one live? What should one do? And what do these questions have to do with being a good person? In Unbecoming Persons: The Rise and Demine of the…
- The University of Chicago Press Podcast
Michelle Wang, "The Art of Terrestrial Diagrams in Early China" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
What can a map do, beyond showing us where things are? Michelle Wang's new book, The Art of Terrestrial Diagrams in Early China (U Chicago Press, 2023)…
- The University of Chicago Press Podcast
David Singerman, "Unrefined: How Capitalism Reinvented Sugar" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
Sugar is everywhere in the western diet, blamed for epidemics of obesity, diabetes, and other modern maladies. Our addiction to sweetness has a long and…
- The University of Chicago Press Podcast
Allen B. Downey, "Probably Overthinking It: How to Use Data to Answer Questions, Avoid Statistical Traps, and Make Better Decisions" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
Statistics are everywhere: in news reports, at the doctor's office, and in every sort of forecast, from the stock market to the weather. Blogger, teacher, and…
- The University of Chicago Press Podcast
Kevin M. Schultz, "Why Everyone Hates White Liberals (Including White Liberals): A History" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
A bracing, accessible history of white American liberals—and why it’s time to change the conversation about them. If there’s one thing most Americans can agree…
- The University of Chicago Press Podcast
Daniel J. Sherman, "Sensations: French Archaeology Between Science and Spectacle, 1890-1940" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
In this episode, Sarah talks to Daniel J. Sherman about his most recent book, Sensations: French Archaeology Between Science and Spectacle, 1890-1940 (U…
- The University of Chicago Press Podcast
Jacinto Cuvi, "The Edge of the Law: Street Vendors and the Erosion of Citizenship in São Paulo" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
How street vendors tangle with the law in São Paulo, Brazil. With a little initiative and very little startup money, an outgoing individual might sell you a…
- The University of Chicago Press Podcast
Shakirah E. Hudani, "Master Plans and Minor Acts: Repairing the City in Post-Genocide Rwanda" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
Master Plans and Minor Acts: Repairing the City in Post-Genocide Rwanda (U of Chicago Press, 2024) by Dr. Shakirah Hudani examines a “material politics of…
- The University of Chicago Press Podcast
Dan Davies, "The Unaccountability Machine: Why Big Systems Make Terrible Decisions—and How the World Lost Its Mind" (U of Chicago Press, 2025)
For this episode of Liminal Library, I interviewed Dan Davies about The Unaccountability Machine: Why Big Systems Make Terrible Decisions—and How the World…
- The University of Chicago Press Podcast
Lucy Delap, "Feminisms: A Global History" (U Chicago Press, 2020)
Today Jana Byars talks to Lucy Delap, Reader in Modern British and Gender History at Murray Edwards College, Cambridge University, about her new book…
- The University of Chicago Press Podcast
Daniel Wortel-London, "The Menace of Prosperity: New York City and the Struggle for Economic Development, 1865–1981" (U of Chicago Press, 2025)
Many local policymakers make decisions based on a deep-seated belief: what’s good for the rich is good for cities. Convinced that local finances depend on…
- The University of Chicago Press Podcast
Darren W. Davis and David C. Wilson, "Racial Resentment in the Political Mind" (U Chicago Press, 2021)
In Racial Resentment in the Political Mind, Darren W. Davis and David C. Wilson challenge the commonly held notion that all racial negativity, disagreements…
- The University of Chicago Press Podcast
Kirin Narayan, "Cave of My Ancestors: Vishwakarma and the Artisans of Ellora" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
On the podcast today I am joined by Kirin Narayan, emerita professor at the College of Asia and the Pacific at the Australian National University. Kirin is…
- The University of Chicago Press Podcast
Federico Marcon, "Fascism: The History of a Word" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
The rise and popular support for authoritarianism around the world and within traditional democracies have spurred debates over the meaning of the term…
- The University of Chicago Press Podcast
Gavin Williams, "Format Friction: Perspectives on the Shellac Disc" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
With the rise of the gramophone around 1900, the shellac disc traveled the world and eventually became the dominant sound format in the first half of the…
- The University of Chicago Press Podcast
Shani Adia Evans, "We Belong Here: Gentrification, White Spacemaking, and a Black Sense of Place" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
Although Portland, Oregon, is sometimes called “America’s Whitest city,” Black residents who grew up there made it their own. The neighborhoods of Northeast…
- The University of Chicago Press Podcast
Charlotte Bentley, "New Orleans and the Creation of Transatlantic Opera, 1819–1859" (U of Chicago Press, 2022)
Jazz is the music that many people associate with New Orleans. But before there was jazz in New Orleans there was opera. It was the only city in the United…
- The University of Chicago Press Podcast
Robyn Arianrhod, "Vector: A Surprising Story of Space, Time, and Mathematical Transformation" (U of Chicago Press, 2024)
A celebration of the seemingly simple idea that allowed us to imagine the world in new dimensions--sparking both controversy and discovery. The stars of this…
- The University of Chicago Press Podcast
Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, "Heaven Has a Wall: Religion, Borders, and the Global United States" (U of Chicago Press, 2025)
Our national conversation about the border has taken a religious turn. When televangelists declare, “Heaven has a wall,” activists shout back, “Jesus was a…
- The University of Chicago Press Podcast
Ahmad Greene-Hayes, "Underworld Work: Black Atlantic Religion Making in Jim Crow New Orleans" (U of Chicago Press, 2025)
A rethinking of African American religious history that focuses on the development and evolution of Africana spiritual traditions in Jim Crow New Orleans. When…
- The University of Chicago Press Podcast
David E. Campbell and Christina Wolbrecht, "See Jane Run: How Women Politicians Matter for Young People" (U of Chicago Press, 2025)
Notre Dame University Political Scientists Dave Campbell and Christina Wolbrecht have a new book that focuses on the impression that female candidates make on…
- The University of Chicago Press Podcast
Neil Gregor, "The Symphony Concert in Nazi Germany" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
A new history of how the musical worlds of German towns and cities were transformed during the Nazi era. In the years after the Nazis came to power in January…
- The University of Chicago Press Podcast
Andrew S. Berish, "Hating Jazz: A History of Its Disparagement, Mockery, and Other Forms of Abuse" (U of Chicago Press, 2025)
Andrew S. Berish. 2025. Hating Jazz: A History of Its Disparagement, Mockery, and Other Forms of Abuse. (U of Chicago Press, 2025) Some good words from the…
- The University of Chicago Press Podcast
Andrew Hartman, "Karl Marx in America" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
Karl Marx in America (University of Chicago Press, 2025), by Andrew Hartman To read Karl Marx is to contemplate a world created by capitalism. People have long…
- The University of Chicago Press Podcast
Julie Singer, "Out of the Mouths of Babes: Infant Voices in Medieval French Literature" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
A wide-ranging study of the rich questions raised by speaking infants in medieval French literature. Medieval literature is full of strange moments when…
- The University of Chicago Press Podcast
Niayesh Afshordi and Phil Halper, "Battle of the Big Bang: The New Tales of Our Cosmic Origins" (University of Chicago Press, 2025)
A thrilling exploration of competing cosmological origin stories, comparing new scientific ideas that upend our very notions of space, time, and reality. By…
- The University of Chicago Press Podcast
James M. Lang, "Write Like You Teach: Taking Your Classroom Skills to a Bigger Audience" (University of Chicago Press, 2025)
Teachers are subject matter experts that can distill information into manageable chunks for their students. In Write Like You Teach: Taking Your Classroom…
- The University of Chicago Press Podcast
Emily Hauser, "Penelope’s Bones: A New History of Homer’s World through the Women Written Out of It" (Univ of Chicago Press, 2025)
Achilles. Agamemnon. Odysseus. Hector. The lives of these and many other men in the greatest epics of ancient Greece have been pored over endlessly in the past…
- The University of Chicago Press Podcast
Brook Ziporyn, "Experiments in Mystical Atheism: Godless Epiphanies from Daoism to Spinoza and Beyond" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
A new approach to the theism-scientism divide rooted in a deeper form of atheism. Western philosophy is stuck in an irresolvable conflict between two…
- The University of Chicago Press Podcast
Andrew Hartman, "Karl Marx in America" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
Karl Marx in America (University of Chicago Press, 2025), by Andrew Hartman To read Karl Marx is to contemplate a world created by capitalism. People have long…
- The University of Chicago Press Podcast
Maraam A. Dwidar, "Power to the Partners: Organizational Coalitions in Social Justice Advocacy" (University of Chicago Press, 2025)
A vital examination of how social and economic justice organizations overcome resource disadvantages and build political power. Why do some coalitions triumph…
- The University of Chicago Press Podcast
Carol A. Heimer, "Governing the Global Clinic: HIV and the Legal Transformation of Medicine" (University of Chicago Press, 2025)
HIV emerged in the world at a time when medicine and healthcare were undergoing two major transformations: globalization and a turn toward legally inflected…
- The University of Chicago Press Podcast
Matthew Shindell, "Lunar: A History of the Moon in Myths, Maps and Matter" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
The first book to combine exquisite cartographical charts of the Moon with a thorough exploration of the Moon’s role in popular culture, science, and myth…
- The University of Chicago Press Podcast
Nicole C. Nelson, "Model Behavior: Animal Experiments, Complexity, and the Genetics of Psychiatric Disorders" (U Chicago Press, 2018)
Mice are used as model organisms across a wide range of fields in science today--but it is far from obvious how studying a mouse in a maze can help us…
- The University of Chicago Press Podcast
False Dawn: A Conversation with George Selgin on Recovering from the Great Depression
Join us on Madison's Notes as we sit down with George Selgin, senior fellow and director emeritus of the Cato Institute’s Center for Monetary and Financial…
- The University of Chicago Press Podcast
Pollyanna Rhee, "Natural Attachments: The Domestication of American Environmentalism, 1920–1970" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
A massive oil spill in the Pacific Ocean near Santa Barbara, California, in 1969 quickly became a landmark in the history of American environmentalism, helping…
- The University of Chicago Press Podcast
Andrew Griebeler, "Botanical Icons: Critical Practices of Illustration in the Premodern Mediterranean" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
A richly illustrated account of how premodern botanical illustrations document evolving knowledge about plants and the ways they were studied in the past…
- The University of Chicago Press Podcast
David Serlin, "Window Shopping with Helen Keller: Architecture and Disability in Modern Culture" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
Window Shopping with Helen Keller: Architecture and Disability in Modern Culture (U Chicago Press, 2025) offers a history of how encounters between architects…
- The University of Chicago Press Podcast
Matthew Daniel Eddy, "Media and the Mind: Art, Science, and Notebooks as Paper Machines, 1700-1830" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
We often think of reason as a fixed entity, as a definitive body of facts that do not change over time. But during the Enlightenment, reason also was seen as a…
- The University of Chicago Press Podcast
Chloe Ahmann, "Futures After Progress: Hope and Doubt in Late Industrial Baltimore" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
Factory fires, chemical explosions, and aerial pollutants have inexorably shaped South Baltimore into one of the most polluted places in the country. In…
- The University of Chicago Press Podcast
Rebecca Zorach, "Temporary Monuments: Art, Land, and America's Racial Enterprise" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
Art has long played a key role in constructing how people understand and imagine America. Starting with contemporary controversies over public monuments in the…
- The University of Chicago Press Podcast
Sam Klug, "The Internal Colony: Race and the American Politics of Global Decolonization" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
In The Internal Colony: Race and the American Politics of Global Decolonization (University of Chicago Press, 2025), Dr. Sam Klug reveals the central but…
- The University of Chicago Press Podcast
Sinem Arcak Casale, "Gifts in the Age of Empire: Ottoman-Safavid Cultural Exchange, 1500–1639" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
When the Safavid dynasty, founded in 1501, built a state that championed Iranian identity and Twelver Shi’ism, it prompted the more established Ottoman Empire…
- The University of Chicago Press Podcast
Rune Nyord, "Yearning for Immortality: The European Invention of the Ancient Egyptian Afterlife" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
Many of us are familiar with the ancient Egyptians’ obsession with immortality and the great efforts they made to secure the quality of their afterlife. But…
- The University of Chicago Press Podcast
William Max Nelson, "Enlightenment Biopolitics: A History of Race, Eugenics, and the Making of Citizens" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
In Enlightenment Biopolitics (U Chicago Press, 2024), historian William Max Nelson pursues the ambitious task of tracing the context in which biopolitical…
- The University of Chicago Press Podcast
Colby Gordon, "Glorious Bodies: Trans Theology and Renaissance Literature" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
Glorious Bodies: Trans Theology and Renaissance Literature (U Chicago Press, 2024) offers a prehistory of transness that recovers early modern theological…
- The University of Chicago Press Podcast
Maggie M. Cao, "Painting US Empire: Nineteenth-Century Art and Its Legacies" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
Painting US Empire: Nineteenth-Century Art and Its Legacies (University of Chicago Press, 2025) by Dr. Maggie Cao is the first book to offer a synthetic…
- The University of Chicago Press Podcast
Selena Wisnom, "The Library of Ancient Wisdom: Mesopotamia and the Making of the Modern World" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
When a team of Victorian archaeologists dug into a grassy hill in Iraq, they chanced upon one of the oldest and greatest stores of knowledge ever seen: the…
- The University of Chicago Press Podcast
Nima Bassiri, "Madness and Enterprise: Psychiatry, Economic Reason, and the Emergence of Pathological Value" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
Uncovers a powerful relationship between pathology and money: beginning in the nineteenth century, the severity of mental illness was measured against a…
- The University of Chicago Press Podcast
Jeremy Black, "A History of the Railroad in 100 Maps" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
Since their origins in eighteenth-century England, railroads have spread across the globe, changing everything in their path, from where and how people grew…
- The University of Chicago Press Podcast
Arwen P. Mohun, "American Imperialist: Cruelty and Consequence in the Scramble for Africa" (Chicago UP, 2023)
This biography of “African explorer” Richard Dorsey Mohun, written by one of his descendants, reveals how American greed and state power helped shape the new…
- The University of Chicago Press Podcast
Noam Leshem, "Edges of Care: Living and Dying in No Man's Land" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
“No man’s land” invokes stretches of barren landscape, twisted barbed wire, desolation, and the devastation of war. But this is not always the reality…
- The University of Chicago Press Podcast
Adam R. Nelson, "Exchange of Ideas: The Economy of Higher Education in Early America" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
Exchange of Ideas: The Economy of Higher Education in Early America (U Chicago Press, 2023) launches a breathtakingly ambitious new economic history of…
- The University of Chicago Press Podcast
Ada Palmer, "Inventing the Renaissance: The Myth of a Golden Age" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
Ada Palmer joins Jana Byars to talk about her new book, Inventing the Renaissance (U Chicago Press, 2025) and the ways history is written and used. From the…
- The University of Chicago Press Podcast
Rosemary Wakeman, "The Worlds of Victor Sassoon: Bombay, London, Shanghai, 1918–1941" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
The 1920s and 1930s were a period of cosmopolitan globalization–and no one, perhaps, exemplified it more than Victor Sassoon, business tycoon, trader and…
- The University of Chicago Press Podcast
Antonio A. Casilli, "Waiting for Robots: The Hired Hands of Automation" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
Artificial Intelligence fuels both enthusiasm and panic. Technologists are inclined to give their creations leeway, pretend they’re animated beings, and…
- The University of Chicago Press Podcast
Catherine Tatiana Dunlop, "The Mistral: A Windswept History of Modern France" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
Every year, the chilly mistral wind blows through the Rhône valley of southern France, across the Camargue wetlands, and into the Mediterranean Sea. Most…