Best Marc O Brien Podcasts (2024)

1
Rubina Raja, "Shaping Archaeological Archives: Dialogues Between Fieldwork, Museum Collections, and Private Archives" (Brepols, 2023) 38:54

7m ago38:54

38:54

Archaeology as a discipline has undergone significant changes over the past decades, in particular concerning best practices for how to handle the vast quantities of data that the discipline generates. As Shaping Archaeological Archives: Dialogues between Fieldwork, Museum Collections, and Private Archives (Brepols, 2023) uncovers, much of this dat…

1
Stuart A. Reid, "The Lumumba Plot: The Secret History of the CIA and a Cold War Assassination" (Knopf, 2023) 50:04

7m ago50:04

50:04

Today I talked to Stuart Reid about his new book The Lumumba Plot: The Secret History of the CIA and a Cold War Assassination (Knopf, 2023). It was supposed to be a moment of great optimism, a cause for jubilation. The Congo was at last being set free from Belgium—one of seventeen countries to gain independence in 1960 from ruling European powers. …

1
Raven Simone Maragh-Lloyd, "Black Networked Resistance: Strategic Rearticulations in the Digital Age" (U California Press, 2024) 57:16

8m ago57:16

57:16

Black Networked Resistance: Strategic Rearticulations in the Digital Age (U California Press, 2024) explores the creative range of Black digital users and their responses to varying forms of oppression, utilizing cultural, communicative, political, and technological threads both on and offline. Raven Maragh-Lloyd demonstrates how Black users strat…

1
James A. Cosby, "Rock Music, Authority and Western Culture, 1964-1980" (McFarland, 2024) 42:56

8m ago42:56

42:56

The history of rock and roll music can be seen in a long arc of Western civilization's struggle for both greater individual expression and societal stability. In the 1960s, the West's relationship with authority ruptured, in part due to the rock revolution. The lessons and implications of this era have yet to be fully grasped. James A. Cosby's book…

1
Daniel R. Schwartz, "Ancient Jewish Historians and the German Reich: Seven Studies" (de Gruyter, 2024) 1:13:39

12m ago1:13:39

1:13:39

Apart from an opening survey of modern study of ancient Jewish history, which emphasizes the foundational role of German-Jewish scholars, the studies united in Ancient Jewish Historians and the German Reich: Seven Studies (de Gruyter, 2024) apply philological methods to the writings of four of them: Heinrich Graetz, Isaak Heinemann, Elias Bickerman…

1
Martin Dusinberre, "Mooring the Global Archive: A Japanese Ship and Its Migrant Histories" (Cambridge UP, 2023) 1:06:34

8m ago1:06:34

1:06:34

In Mooring the Global Archive: A Japanese Ship and Its Migrant Histories (Cambridge UP, 2023), Martin Dusinberre follows the Yamashiro-maru steamship across Asian and Pacific waters in an innovative history of Japan's engagement with the outside world in the late-nineteenth century. His compelling in-depth analysis reconstructs the lives of some of…

1
Alexandra Paulin-Booth, "Time and Radical Politics in France: From the Dreyfus Affair to the First World War" (Manchester UP, 2023) 39:03

7m ago39:03

39:03

People experience and comprehend time in different fashions in response to events occurring around them. The experience of time and the speed at which change is perceived to occur may alter during eras of crisis. Time can feel compressed for some and broad or flat for others. These comprehensions of time in turn give form to political views and pro…

1
Elise Andaya, "Pregnant at Work: Low-Wage Workers, Power, and Temporal Injustice" (NYU Press, 2024) 34:21

8m ago34:21

34:21

The low-wage service industry is one of the fastest-growing employment sectors in the US economy. Its workers disproportionately tend to be low-income and minority women. Service sector work entails rigid forms of temporal discipline manifested in work requirements for flexible, last-minute, and round-the-clock availability, as well as limited to n…

1
Kate Morgan, "The Walnut Tree: Women, Violence and the Law – A Hidden History" (Mudlark, 2024) 50:26

12m ago50:26

50:26

'A woman, a dog and a walnut tree, the more they are beaten, the better they’ll be.' So went the proverb quoted by a prominent MP in the Houses of Parliament in 1853. His words – intended ironically in a debate about a rise in attacks on women – summed up the prevailing attitude of the day, in which violence against women was waved away as a part a…

1
Mona Simion, "Resistance to Evidence" (Cambridge UP, 2024) 57:09

20m ago57:09

57:09

We have increasingly sophisticated ways of acquiring and communicating knowledge, but efforts to spread this knowledge often encounter resistance to evidence. The phenomenon of resistance to evidence, while subject to thorough investigation in social psychology, is acutely under-theorised in the philosophical literature. Mona Simion's Resistance to…

1
80s Kids Unite Episode 4: G.I. Joe Action Figures 1:52:19

26m ago1:52:19

1:52:19

80s Kids Unite Episode 4: G.I. Joe Action Figures As 80s kids, there were few toys that held as much power over us as a G.I. Joe action figure. From the evil of Cobra Commander to the mundaneness of Dusty to the aspirational muscles of Outback, every kid in the neighborhood was obsessed. In this episode, we get real personal as we hash out the good…

1
Shakespeare in America 56:11

10m ago56:11

56:11

James Shapiro spoke at the Institute in 2014 about Shakespeare in America, the anthology he edited for the Library of America. He is the Larry Miller Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. Professor Shapiro is the author of many books on Shakespeare, including Shakespeare in a Divided America, which was a finalist f…

1
Constantin Ardeleanu, "Steamboat Modernity: Travel, Transport, and Social Transformation on the Lower Danube, 1830–1860" (CEU Press, 2024) 1:11:51

10m ago1:11:51

1:11:51

Through a skillful combination of economic and cultural history, this book describes the impact on Moldavia and Wallachia of steam navigation on the Danube. The Danube route integrated the two principalities into a dense network of European roads and waterways. From the 1830s to the 1860s, steamboat transport transformed time and space for the area…

1
The Climate Crisis as a Problem of Collective Action: A Discussion with Dana Fisher 40:34

6m ago40:34

40:34

In this episode of International Horizons, Professor Dana Fisher, Director of the Center for Environment, Community, & Equity (CECE) and Professor in the School of International Service at American University, discusses with RBI Director John Torpey her approach to dealing with the climate crisis. Fisher explains how the climate crisis is really a …

1
Chaim Miller, "Turning Judaism Outward: A Biography of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson the Seventh Lubavitcher Rebbe" (Kol Menachem, 2014) 21:03

6m ago21:03

21:03

Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson (1902-1994), the Lubavitcher Rebbe, took an insular Chasidic group that was almost decimated by the Holocaust and transformed it into one of the most influential and controversial forces in world Jewry. Join us as we speak with Rabbi Chaim Miller about his biography of the Rebbe, Turning Judaism Outward (Kol Menache…

1
Marina Welker, "Kretek Capitalism: Making, Marketing, and Consuming Clove Cigarettes in Indonesia" (U California Press, 2024) 39:14

6m ago39:14

39:14

Indonesia is the world's second largest cigarette market: two out of three men smoke, and clove-laced tobacco cigarettes called kretek make up 95 percent of the market. To account for the staggering success of this lethal industry, Kretek Capitalism: Making, Marketing, and Consuming Clove Cigarettes in Indonesia (University of California Press, 202…

1
Anna Brinkman, "Balancing Strategy: Sea Power, Neutrality, and Prize Law in the Seven Years' War" (Cambridge UP, 2024) 55:40

6m ago55:40

55:40

What is the relationship between seapower, law, and strategy? In Balancing Strategy: Seapower, Neutrality, and Prize-Law in the Seven Years' War (Cambridge University Press, 2024) Dr. Anna Brinkman uses in-depth analysis of cases brought before the Court of Prize Appeal during the Seven Years' War to explore how Britain worked to shape maritime int…

1
Mari Takayanagi and Elizabeth Hallam Smith, "Necessary Women: The Untold Story of Parliament's Working Women" (The History Press, 2023) 1:07:58

10m ago1:07:58

1:07:58

When suffragette Emily Wilding Davison hid overnight in the Houses of Parliament in 1911 to have her name recorded in the census there, she may not have known that there were sixty-seven other women also resident in Parliament that night: housekeepers, kitchen maids, domestic servants, and wives and daughters living in households. Necessary Women: …

1
Yaroslav Trofimov, "Our Enemies Will Vanish: The Russian Invasion and Ukraine's War of Independence" (Penguin, 2024) 47:01

6m ago47:01

47:01

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Yaroslav Trofimov has spent months on end at the heart of the conflict, very often on its front lines. In Our Enemies Will Vanish: The Russian Invasion and Ukraine's War of Independence (Penguin, 2024), he traces the war’s decisive moments—from the battle for Kyiv to more recently the gruelling and blo…

1
Nuzhat Abbas, "River in an Ocean: Essays on Translation" (Trace Press, 2023) 31:08

10m ago31:08

31:08

What are the histories, constraints, and possibilities of language in relation to bodies, origins, land, colonialism, gender, war, displacement, desire, and migration? Moving across genres, memories, belongings, and borders, River in an Ocean: Essays on Translation (Trace Press, 2023) invites readers to consider translation as a form of ethical and…

1
Jennifer Liu, "Indoctrinating the Youth: Secondary Education in Wartime China and Postwar Taiwan, 1937-1960" (U Hawaii Press, 2024) 1:10:00

6m ago1:10:00

1:10:00

Indoctrinating the Youth: Secondary Education in Wartime China and Postwar Taiwan, 1937-1960 (U Hawaii Press, 2024) examines how the Guomindang (GMD or Nationalists) sought to maintain control of middle-school students and cultivate their political loyalty over the trajectory of the Second Sino-Japanese War, Chinese Civil War, and postwar Taiwan. D…

1
Todd Mcgowan, "Embracing Alienation: Why We Shouldn't Try to Find Ourselves" (Repeater, 2024) 57:39

10m ago57:39

57:39

The left views alienation as something to be resisted or overcome, but could it actually form the basis of our emancipation? We often think of our existential and political projects as attempts to overcome or eradicate alienation: therapists imagine that they help patients to attain self-identity; political revolutionaries strive for a society in w…

1
Priya Satia, "Empire of Guns: The Violent Making of the Industrial Revolution" (Bloomsbury, 2019) 53:36

10m ago53:36

53:36

From the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, the industrial revolution transformed Britain from an agricultural and artisanal economy to one dominated by industry, ushering in unprecedented growth in technology and trade and putting the country at the center of the global economy. But the commonly accepted story of the industrial revolution, anc…

1
Wei Wu, "Esoteric Buddhism in China: Engaging Japanese and Tibetan Traditions, 1912–1949" (Columbia UP, 2023) 1:08:02

27m ago1:08:02

1:08:02

During the Republican period (1912–1949) and after, many Chinese Buddhists sought inspiration from non-Chinese Buddhist traditions, showing a particular interest in esoteric teachings. What made these Buddhists dissatisfied with Chinese Buddhism, and what did they think other Buddhist traditions could offer? Which elements did they choose to follow…

1
En Li, "Betting on the Civil Service Examinations: The Lottery in Late Qing China" (Harvard UP, 2023) 38:47

7m ago38:47

38:47

During the Qing dynasty in China, a wide variety of people participated in a lottery game named weixing (“surname guessing”), which had participants placing bets on the surnames of civil service examination candidates. A fiercely competitive process, those who passed the various levels of the civil service and military examinations could climb the …

1
Catherine D'Ignazio, "Counting Feminicide: Data Feminism in Action" (MIT Press, 2024) 53:42

15m ago53:42

53:42

What isn't counted doesn't count. And mainstream institutions systematically fail to account for feminicide, the gender-related killing of women and girls, including cisgender and transgender women. Against this failure, Counting Feminicide: Data Feminism in Action (MIT Press, 2024) brings to the fore the work of data activists across the Americas …

1
Joan E. Cho, "Seeds of Mobilization: The Authoritarian Roots of South Korea's Democracy" (U Michigan Press, 2024) 1:02:35

15m ago1:02:35

1:02:35

South Korea is sometimes held as a dream case of modernization theory, a testament to how economic development leads to democracy. Seeds of Mobilisation: The Authoritarian Roots of South Korea's Democracy (University of Michigan Press, 2024) by Dr. Joan E. Cho takes a closer look at the history of South Korea to show that Korea’s advance to democra…

1
Miguel A. Martínez, "Research Handbook on Urban Sociology" (Edward Elgar, 2024) 54:19

29m ago54:19

54:19

Emphasising the social, critical and situated dimensions of the urban, this comprehensive Research Handbook presents a unique collection of theoretical and empirical perspectives on urban sociology. Bringing together expert contributors from across the world, it provides a rich overview and research agenda for contemporary urban sociological schola…

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