Loading...

PODCAST

New Books in Intellectual History

New Books Network

This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: ⁠newbooksnetwork.com⁠ Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox:

society & culture

All Episodes

0:00

Two Revolutionary Jews: Leon Trotsky and Chaim...

New Books in Intellectual History ·

2026/07/29

When Jews plunged into the world of politics en masse at the beginning of the 20th century, a variety of new options were available to them. Two of the leading figures who proffered novel, but opposing political avenues to the Jewish masses were Dr. Chaim Zhitlowsky and Leon Trotsky. Zhitlowsky, a founder of the Russian Socialist Revolutionary party, offered a synthesis of socialism and Yiddish nationalism. Trotsky, a leading Russian Social Democrat, formulated a strict version of internationalism

en

0:00

Jewish Folk Medicine in Eastern Europe

New Books in Intellectual History ·

2026/07/25

Jews have been active participants in shaping the healing practices of the communities of Eastern Europe. Their approach largely combined the ideas of traditional Ashkenazi culture with the heritage of medieval and early modern medicine. Holy rabbis and faith healers, as well as Jewish barbers, innkeepers, and peddlers, all dispensed cures, purveyed folk remedies for different ailments, and gave hope to the sick and their families based on kabbalah, numerology, prayer, and magical Hebrew formulas

en

42:47

Mikuláš Pešta, "Student Internationalism and the...

New Books in Intellectual History ·

2026/07/24

In this episode of the CEU Review of Books Podcast, I sat down with Mikuláš Pešta to talk about his new book,Student Internationalism and the Global Cold War: The International Union of Students in Socialist Prague(Bloomsbury, 2026). During our discussion we touched upon how the International Union of Students ended up being headquartered in Prague, the organisation's various activities, and the life of the Secretariat, amongst other topics. You can purchase the book from Bloomsburyhere. The book

en

61:26

Grégory Pierrot, "Fantômes de la révolution noire:...

New Books in Intellectual History ·

2026/07/24

Black Power! A name with a ringto it on both sides of the Atlantic, taken asasign of Black American rage incarnated by a few names:Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael, the Black Panthers, Angela Davis. Behind these archetypes of the 1960s and 70s stood a political movement as mutable as it was international, that of Black Power, with the goal of bringing abouta global uprising. This insurrection of Black worlds has haunted the West for centuries, rumbling beneaththe words of Frantz Fanon and

en

78:48

R. Joseph Parrott, "Dream the Size of Freedom: How...

New Books in Intellectual History ·

2026/07/21

Dream the Size of Freedom: How African Liberation Mobilized New Left Internationalism(University of Pennsylvania Press, 2025) by Dr. R. Joseph Parrott explores how anti-colonial movements in Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau reshaped US activist engagement with the Global South from the 1960s through the 1970s and influenced American foreign policy as the Vietnam War drew to a close. These Portuguese African liberation movements, led by nationalists like Eduardo Mondlane and Amílcar

en

60:13

Timothy Mitchell, "The Alibi of Capital: How We Broke...

New Books in Intellectual History ·

2026/07/21

Stealing the future and concealing the theft—capitalism’s method, as examined by the author of the acclaimed Carbon Democracy Today, extraordinary wealth seems to arrive from nowhere. The trick of conjuring this unearned wealth is, in fact, the key to understanding capitalism’s origins and a clue to why the catastrophe of climate collapse is upon us: value is created by consuming the future. In The Alibi of Capital: How We Broke the Earth to Steal the Future on the Promise of a Better Tomorrow

en

71:38

Elad Lapidot, "State of Others: Levinas and...

New Books in Intellectual History ·

2026/07/21

Elad Lapidot is Professor of Jewish Thought at the University of Lille, France. His work is guided by questions concerning the relation between knowledge and politics. Among his publications:State of Others: Levinas and Decolonial Israel(Indiana UP, forthcoming),Politics of Not Speaking(Albany: SUNY Press, 2025),Jews Out of the Question: A Critique of Anti-Anti-Semitism(Albany: SUNY Press, 2020), Hebrew translation of Hegel’sPhänomenologie des Geistes(Tel Aviv: Resling Publishing, 2020),Heidegger

en

62:11

Susanne Paola Antonetta, "The Devil's Castle: Nazi...

New Books in Intellectual History ·

2026/07/17

The Devil’s Castle: Nazi Eugenics, Euthanasia, and How Psychiatry's Troubled History Reverberates Today(Catapult, 2025)delves into the forgotten history of eugenics and links it to present-day psychiatry to explain how we as a culture continue to get mind care so wrong. In The Devil’s Castle, Susanne Paola Antonetta weaves a haunting narrative that confronts the darkest chapters of psychiatric history while offering a bold vision for the future of mental health care. In 1939, the eugenics movement

en

0:00

Heidegger in Ruins

New Books in Intellectual History ·

2026/07/13

Martin Heidegger’s sympathies for the conservative revolution and National Socialism have long been well known. As the rector of the University of Freiburg in the early 1930s, he worked hard to reshape the university in accordance with National Socialist policies. He also engaged in an all-out struggle to become the movement’s philosophical preceptor, “to lead the leader.” Yet for years, Heidegger’s defenders have tried to separate his political beliefs from his philosophical doctrines. They argued,

en

63:13

Are Capitalism and Democracy Fundamentally...

New Books in Intellectual History ·

2026/07/09

Today I'm speaking with Mordecai Kurz, Joan Kenney Professor of Economics Emeritus at Stanford University. We are discussing his latest book,Private Power and Democracy's Decline: How to Make Capitalism Support Democracy(MIT Press, 2026). After its high-water mark several decades ago, democracy's status continues to slide globally. Capitalism and democracy, which once seemed to complement each other, now appear at odds. Free-market policies and monopolistic technologies have enriched many while

en

55:30

Monika Kirloskar-Steinbach, "Freedom to Know:...

New Books in Intellectual History ·

2026/07/09

Freedom to Know: Creating Community with Ambedkar, Du Bois, Iqbal, Ramabai and Tagore (Edinburgh University Press, 2025) asks how a (world) community can be created to allow structural minorities equitable access to intellectual and material resources Draws on a range of primary sources Brings the work of W.E.B. Du Bois into conversation with his Indian contemporaries Adds a novel historical perspective to recent scholarship on critical social epistemology Diversifies current ways of

en

54:20

A. G. Hopkins, "The Land Where Nothing Works: How...

New Books in Intellectual History ·

2026/07/09

What has happened to Britain? As drivers on its roads can attest, it is the pothole capital of Europe. Once-beautiful towns now feature peeling paint, weeds, and broken railings. Public services are no longer fit for purpose. A malaise seems to infect every aspect of British life: its economy, polity, social order, sense of well-being, domestic regional relationships, and place in the world. In The Land Where Nothing Works: How Britain Lost the Plot (Princeton University Press, 2026), the

en

68:23

Katherine Krauss, "Exemplarity and Allusion in...

New Books in Intellectual History ·

2026/07/06

Exemplarity and Allusion in Macrobius' Saturnalia (Oxford UP, 2026) offers a new framework for interpreting interactions with classical source material in Macrobius’ Saturnalia. It argues that the Saturnalia, an educational dialogue from the fifth century ce, does not view its Greco-Roman models as hegemonic sources of authority but engages with these texts in dynamic and critical ways. In particular, Macrobius responds to both the literary and ethical agendas of his predecessors, a strategy which

en

96:45

Gajendran Ayyathurai, "Tamil Buddhism and Brahminism...

New Books in Intellectual History ·

2026/07/04

Tamil Buddhism and Brahminism in Modern India: Deep Resistance Against Caste (Oxford University Press, 2026) explores Tamil Buddhism in modern India, focusing on its emergence as a response to caste-based oppression during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Central to this movement was Pandit Iyothee Thass (1845–1914), a pioneering intellectual who reinterpreted India’s Buddhist past to challenge brahminical dominance. Thass reasoned that it was because many Indians followed

en

40:24

Rosa Campbell, "The Book That Taught the World to...

New Books in Intellectual History ·

2026/07/02

Despite being one of the leading thinkers of the second wave feminist movement, today Shere Hite is little known, little written about, and, unsurprisingly, little read. Her groundbreaking book, The Hite Report, was the first feminist exploration of the link between sex and male power. It sold millions of copies when first published in 1976 and revolutionised the way people thought about marriage and the female orgasm. How, then, did it, and Hite, disappear from public consciousness? In The Book

en

0:00

Thomas Paine at the Semiquincentennial: A...

New Books in Intellectual History ·

2026/07/01

Thomas Paine: Collected Writings (Princeton University Press, 2026) is the first major new edition of Paine’s works, bringing together all his writings in six breathtaking volumes that dramatically revise our previous understanding of his activities as a writer and his importance as a democratic theorist in the age of revolutions. It includes about 180 new letters and some two hundred works newly attributed to Paine, with twenty-nine works previously regarded as Paine’s being deattributed. Drawing

en

79:15

The Once and Future Republic: On Cicero, Locke, and...

New Books in Intellectual History ·

2026/07/01

In preparation for the 250th anniversary of America’s founding, it would be wise to look back at the ancient thinkers and writers who helped inspire its early leaders. Perhaps the preeminent role model was the Roman statesman and orator, Marcus Tullius Cicero. So here in Episode 11 of Season 5, I interview Michael C. Hawley to talk about the political philosophy of Cicero and his influence on the American Republic. Michael Hawley is an assistant professor in the School of Civic Life and Leadership

en

77:37

Andy Byford, "Science of the Child in Late Imperial...

New Books in Intellectual History ·

2026/06/27

Between the 1880s and the 1930s, children became the focus of unprecedented scientific and professional interest in modernizing societies worldwide, including in the Russian Empire and then the Soviet Union. Those who claimed children as special objects of investigation were initially spread across a network of imperfectly professionalized scholarly and occupational groups based mostly in the fields of medicine, education, and psychology. From their various perspectives, they made ambitious claims

en

100:17

Charles J. Stivale, "Unfolding the Deleuze Seminars,...

New Books in Intellectual History ·

2026/06/25

From the inside flap: “A rich resource of Deleuze’s research that is unavailable in his published writing Includes summaries of 216 seminar sessions available in transcripts and recordings Summaries are based on research for the Deleuze Seminars project (co-directed by Charles J. Stivale and Daniel W. Smith), where full transcripts and translations, to which readers will have access for simultaneous or subsequent consultation, have been developed by an international team of

en

46:41

Catherine Fletcher, "The Firearm Revolution: From...

New Books in Intellectual History ·

2026/06/23

In Renaissance Italy, the gun was not only a tool of war but also a desirable object, a luxury item carried at court. Guns were in use on the battlefield by 1440; later in that century Leonardo da Vinci sketched a design for a faster-firing, more portable handgun that could be hidden beneath a cloak. As the gun proliferated in society, it became both a means of self-defence and a threat to civic order. In The Firearm Revolution: From Renaissance Italy to the European Empires (Princeton

en

942 results

Similar Podcasts

وجوه من الـظل

Medi1 Podcast

Straight Shooter with Stephen A.

Stephen A. Smith & SiriusXM

SwissCast Shows: Where Swiss Life Meets English Voices

SwissCast Network

The Determined People Podcast

John Harrell

The Next Big Idea

Next Big Idea Club