Best Iris West Podcasts (2024)

1
Iris Jamahl Dunkle, "Riding Like the Wind: The Life of Sanora Babb" (U California Press, 2024) 52:12

3d ago52:12

52:12

In 1939, when John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath was published, it became an instant bestseller and a prevailing narrative in the nation's collective imagination of the era. But it also stopped the publication of another important novel, silencing a gifted writer who was more intimately connected to the true experiences of Dust Bowl migrants. In …

1
Jackie Wang, "Alien Daughters Walk Into the Sun: An Almanac of Extreme Girlhood" (Semiotext(e), 2023) 1:18:15

37m ago1:18:15

1:18:15

Jackie Wang is a poet, scholar, multimedia artist, and Assistant Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. She is the author of the poetry collection The Sunflower Cast a Spell to Save Us from the Void (2021), which was a finalist for the National Book Award; the critical essay collection Carceral Capital…

1
Chasing Butterflies: Stories of Cubans in Exploitation-Era Florida – Prologue, Dolores Carlos’ story – Podcast 144 41:17

5h ago41:17

41:17

Cuba may only be 90 miles from the southern tip of the United States – a leisurely boat trip on a calm day – but since the 1950s, the island has seemed part of a distant world, too many communist miles away. It wasn’t always the case. For years, Cuba was almost an extension of America, almost another star on its star-spangled banner. Links between …

1
Elizabeth Korver-Glenn and Sarah Mayorga, "A Good Reputation: How Residents Fight for an American Barrio" (U Chicago Press, 2024) 1:01:21

3h ago1:01:21

1:01:21

Neighborhoods have the power to form significant parts of our worlds and identities. A neighborhood's reputation, however, doesn't always match up to how residents see themselves or wish to be seen. The distance between residents' desires and their environment can profoundly shape neighborhood life. In A Good Reputation: How Residents Fight for an …

1
Aliza Arzt, "Turning the Pages: Conversations Through Time with Rabbi Isador Signer" (Ben Yehuda Press, 2024) 1:16:01

38m ago1:16:01

1:16:01

Today I talked to Aliza Arzt about Turning the Pages: Conversations Through Time with Rabbi Isador Signer (Ben Yehuda Press, 2024) In 1924, Rabbi Isidor Signer was ordained by the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York City. He had been born in Romania and raised in Montreal. He would go on to lead congregations in Bethlehem, Pennsylvan…

1
Chris Benner and Manuel Pastor, "Charging Forward: Lithium Valley, Electric Vehicles, and a Just Future" (The New Press, 2024) 32:41

3h ago32:41

32:41

A clarion call for justice in the quest for clean energy California’s Salton Sea region is home to some of the worst environmental health conditions in the country. Recently, however, it has also become ground zero in the new “lithium gold rush”—the race to power the rapidly expanding electric vehicle and renewable energy storage market. The immens…

1
Yolonda Youngs, "Framing Nature: The Creation of an American Icon at the Grand Canyon" (U Nebraska Press, 2024) 1:05:41

3h ago1:05:41

1:05:41

Perhaps no American landscape is as iconic as the rainbow rocks of Arizona's Grand Canyon. Yet, as the geographer Yolonda Youngs argues, the Grand Canyon many people think they know is but one sliver of the story of the wider Grand Canyon as a historical and physical place. In Framing Nature: The Creation of an American Icon at the Grand Canyon (U …

1
Christopher Paul Clohessy, "Half of My Heart: The Narratives of Zaynab, Daughter of Alî" (Gorgias Press, 2020) 40:59

3d ago40:59

40:59

Today I talked to Christopher Paul Clohessy about Half of My Heart: The Narratives of Zaynab, Daughter of Alî (Gorgias Press, 2020). As Abû ʿAbd Allâh al-Ḥusayn, son of ʿAlî and Fâṭima and grandson of Muḥammad, moved inexorably towards death on the field of Karbalâʾ, his sister Zaynab was drawn ever closer to the centre of the family of Muḥammad, t…

1
Iris Jamahl Dunkle, "Riding Like the Wind: The Life of Sanora Babb" (U California Press, 2024) 52:12

3d ago52:12

52:12

In 1939, when John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath was published, it became an instant bestseller and a prevailing narrative in the nation's collective imagination of the era. But it also stopped the publication of another important novel, silencing a gifted writer who was more intimately connected to the true experiences of Dust Bowl migrants. In …

1
Israel G. Solares, "Underground Leviathan: Corporate Sovereignty and Mining in the Americas" (U Nevada Press, 2024) 33:49

9d ago33:49

33:49

Underground Leviathan: Corporate Sovereignty and Mining in the Americas (U Nevada Press, 2024) explores the emergence, dynamics, and lasting impacts of a mining firm, the United States Company. Through its exercise of sovereign power across the borders of North America in the early twentieth century, the transnational US Company shaped the business…

1
Eric Steven Zimmer, "Red Earth Nation: A History of the Meskwaki Settlement" (U Oklahoma Press, 2024) 1:35:50

4d ago1:35:50

1:35:50

In 1857, the Meskwaki Nation began the long process of piecing their homelands back together. After decades of war, dispossession, and removal at the hands of the American government and American settlers, the Meskwaki, bit by bit, purchase by purchase, started to reestablish a land base along the banks of the Iowa River, more than a century and a …

1
Black Woman on Board: Claudia Hampton, the California State University, and the Fight to Save Affirmative Action 59:35

11d ago59:35

59:35

Today’s book is: Black Woman on Board: Claudia Hampton, the California State University, and the Fight to Save Affirmative Action (University of Rochester Press, 2024) by Dr. Donna J. Nicol, which examines the leadership strategies that Black women educators have employed as influential power brokers in predominantly white colleges and universities…

1
Vanya Vaidehi Bhargav, "Being Hindu, Being Indian: Lala Lajpat Rai’s Ideas of Nationhood" (India Viking, 2024) 1:02:02

10d ago1:02:02

1:02:02

Vanya Vaidehi Bhargav’s book Being Hindu, Being Indian: Lala Lajpat Rai’s Ideas of Nationhood (Penguin Random House India, 2024) undertakes a systematic intellectual study of Lala Lajpat Rai’s nationalist thought through four decades of his active political life, lived between 1888 and 1928. It contests the dominant scholarly interpretation of Lajp…

1
William H. F. Altman, "Plato the Teacher: The Crisis of the Republic" (Lexington, 2012) 1:39:30

15d ago1:39:30

1:39:30

In Plato the Teacher: The Crisis of the Republic (Lexington, 2012), William Altman shines a light on the pedagogical technique of the playful Plato, especially his ability to create living discourses that directly address the student. Reviving an ancient concern with reconstructing the order in which Plato intended his dialogues to be taught as opp…

1
Jane Little Botkin, "The Pink Dress: A Memoir of a Reluctant Beauty Queen" (She Writes Press, 2024) 39:41

15d ago39:41

39:41

Growing up in West Texas, Jane Little Botkin didn’t have designs on becoming a beauty queen. But not long after joining a pageant on a whim in college, she became the first protégé of El Paso’s Richard Guy and Rex Holt, known as the “Kings of Beauty”—just as the 1970’s counterculture movement began to take off. A pink, rose-covered gown—a Guyrex cr…

1
Episode #28: The House in Paris, by Elizabeth Bowen 1:15:41

16d ago1:15:41

1:15:41

Welcome to One Bright Book! Join our hosts Dorian, Rebecca, and Frances as they discuss THE HOUSE IN PARIS by Elizabeth Bowen, and chat about their current reading. For our next episode, we will discuss FRAGMENTS OF A PARADISE by Jean Giono, translated from the French by Paul Eprile. This English language translation of Giono's "often over-looked s…

1
Francis Stevens, "The Heads of Cerberus and Other Stories" (MIT Press, 2024) 40:43

16d ago40:43

40:43

When three people in Philadelphia inhale dust developed by a scientist who has discovered parallel universes, they are transported into an interdimensional no-man's-land that is populated by supernatural beings. From there, they go on to an alternate-future version of Philadelphia—a frightening dystopian nation-state in which citizens are numbered,…

1
Emily Carman, "Independent Stardom: Freelance Women in the Hollywood Studio System" (U Texas Press, 2016) 1:15:08

17d ago1:15:08

1:15:08

During the heyday of Hollywood’s studio system, stars were carefully cultivated and promoted, but at the price of their independence. This familiar narrative of Hollywood stardom receives a long-overdue shakeup in Emily Carman’s new book. Far from passive victims of coercive seven-year contracts, a number of classic Hollywood’s best-known actresses…

1
Iris De La Cruz – And Her Daughter Melissa: Street Walking Blues – Podcast 143 1:00:46

21d ago1:00:46

1:00:46

A few years ago, I was researching an article for The Rialto Report when I came across a 1980 radio program from WBAI, a popular New York City station that specialized in progressive and alternative voices at the time. This particular show featured a prostitute named Iris De La Cruz. Iris wasn’t directly connected to the adult film scene in New Yor…

1
Jack Palmer, "Zygmunt Bauman and the West: A Sociology of Intellectual Exile" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2023) 1:20:58

20d ago1:20:58

1:20:58

Jack Palmer’s Zygmunt Bauman and the West: A Sociology of Intellectual Exile (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2023) invites us to reconsider a figure who sociology thought it knew well. Presenting Bauman as occupying an ‘exilic’ position as ‘in, but not of, the West’ Palmer presents a number of paths through Bauman’s sociology which speak to conte…

1
Robert Polner and Michael Tubridy, "An Irish Passion for Justice: The Life of Rebel New York Attorney Paul O'Dwyer" (Cornell UP, 2024) 50:36

17d ago50:36

50:36

In the city of New York from the 1930s to the 1990s, Irish attorney Paul O’Dwyer was a fierce and enduring presence in courtrooms, on picket lines, and in contests for elected office. He was forever the advocate of the downtrodden and marginalized, fighting not only for Irish Catholics in Northern Ireland but for workers, radicals, Jews, and Africa…

1
Amir Alexander, "Liberty's Grid: A Founding Father, a Mathematical Dreamland, and the Shaping of America" (U Chicago Press, 2024) 1:00:11

18d ago1:00:11

1:00:11

Seen from an airplane, much of the United States appears to be a gridded land of startling uniformity. Perpendicular streets and rectangular fields, all precisely measured and perfectly aligned, turn both urban and rural America into a checkerboard landscape that stretches from horizon to horizon. In evidence throughout the country, but especially …

1
Tom Navon, "Radical Assimilation in the Face of the Holocaust: Otto Heller (1897–1945)" (SUNY Press, 2024) 1:03:59

18d ago1:03:59

1:03:59

This book explores the confrontation of radically assimilated Jews with the violent collapse of their envisioned integration into a cosmopolitan European society, which culminated during the Holocaust. This confrontation is examined through the biography of the German-speaking intellectual and prominent communist theoretician of the Jewish question…

1
Introducing: The Penguin Official Podcast 1:12:41

19d ago1:12:41

1:12:41

If you enjoyed The Flash, you may also like The Penguin Official Podcast from HBO. On The Penguin Official Podcast host, film critic Amy Nicholson, explores the brutal rise and fall of power in Gotham City through the eyes of Oz Cobb, aka, The Penguin. We’ll hear firsthand accounts from the creators, cast and crew, like series creator, Executive Pr…

1
Immigration Realities: Challenging Common Misperceptions 1:08:46

20d ago1:08:46

1:08:46

Today’s book is: Immigration Realities: Challenging Common Misperceptions (Columbia UP, 2024), by Ernesto Castaneda and Carina Cione, which is a practical, evidence-based primer on immigrants and immigration. Each chapter debunks a frequently encountered claim and answers common questions. Presenting the latest findings and decades of interdiscipli…

1
Alexis Pauline Gumbs, "Survival Is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde" (FSG, 2024) 55:07

20d ago55:07

55:07

We remember Audre Lorde as an iconic writer, a quotable teacher whose words and face grace T-shirts, nonprofit annual reports, and campus diversity-center walls. But even those who are inspired by Lorde's teachings on "the creative power of difference" may be missing something fundamental about her life and work, and what they can mean for us today…

1
Jack Margolin, "The Wagner Group: Inside Russia’s Mercenary Army" (Reaktion Books, 2024) 52:59

20d ago52:59

52:59

The Wagner Group: Inside Russia’s Mercenary Army (Reaktion, 2024) exposes the history and the future of the Wagner Group, Russia’s notorious and secretive mercenary army, revealing details of their operations never documented before. Using extensive leaks, first-hand accounts, and the byzantine paper trail left in its wake, Jack Margolin traces the…

1
William H. F. Altman, "The German Stranger: Leo Strauss and National Socialism" (Lexington Books, 2010) 2:12:04

21d ago2:12:04

2:12:04

Leo Strauss was a German-Jewish emigrant to the United States, an author, professor and political philosopher. Born in 1899 in Kirchhain in the Kingdom of Prussia to an observant Jewish family, Strauss received his doctorate from the University of Hamburg in 1921, and began his scholarly work in the 1920s, as well as participating in the German Zio…

1
Will Grant, "Populista: The Rise of Latin America's 21st Century Strongman" (Bloomsbury, 2021) 57:14

22d ago57:14

57:14

Today I talked to Will Grant about his book Populista: The Rise of Latin America's 21st Century Strongman (Bloomsbury, 2021). or more than six decades, Fidel Castro's words have echoed through the politics of Latin America. His towering political influence still looms over the region today. The swing to the Left in Latin America, known as the 'Pink…

1
Philip Freeman, "Julian: Rome's Last Pagan Emperor" (Yale UP, 2023) 41:32

23d ago41:32

41:32

Today I talked to Philip Freeman about his new book Julian: Rome’s Last Pagan Emperor (Yale UP, 2023). Flavius Claudius Julianus, or Julian the Apostate, ruled Rome as sole emperor for just a year and a half, from 361 to 363, but during that time he turned the world upside down. Although a nephew of Constantine the Great, the first Christian empero…

1
Paul Peart-Smith, "Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz's Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States: A Graphic Interpretation" (Beacon Press, 2024) 1:18:28

24d ago1:18:28

1:18:28

As the author of a graphic history, I loved chatting with Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and Paul Peart-Smith about the graphic interpretation of An Indigenous People’s History of the United States (Beacon Press, 2024). An Indigenous Peoples' History of The United States originally came out in 2014 with Beacon Press. In 2019 it was adapted into a Young Peopl…

1
Pamela Riney-Kehrberg, "When a Dream Dies: Agriculture, Iowa, and the Farm Crisis of the 1980s" (UP of Kansas, 2022) 48:57

26d ago48:57

48:57

Unlike a flood or fire, a the Farming Crisis of the 1980s did not have a set beginning of ending. Rather, it was a rolling, often invisible, disaster that could be easy to ignore if you lived in towns or cities, even within the West and Midwest. Yet, in places like rural Iowa, the impacts of this complex crisis were devastating and indeed, ongoing …

1
Grant Olwage, "Paul Robeson's Voices" (Oxford UP, 2023) 1:38:18

26d ago1:38:18

1:38:18

Paul Robeson's Voices (Oxford UP, 2023) is a meditation on Robeson's singing, a study of the artist's life in song. Music historian Grant Olwage examines Robeson's voice as it exists in two broad and intersecting domains: as sound object and sounding gesture, specifically how it was fashioned in the contexts of singing practices, in recital, concer…

1
Peter Rose, "The Good War of Consul Reeves" (Blacksmith Books, 2024) 50:15

27d ago50:15

50:15

Macau was supposed to be a sleepy post for John Reeves, the British consul for the Portuguese colony on China’s southern coast. He arrived, alone, in June 1941, his wife and daughter left behind in China. Seven months later, Japan had bombed Pearl Harbor, invaded Hong Kong, and made Reeves the last remaining British diplomat for hundreds of miles, …

1
Matthew C. Ehrlich, "The Krebiozen Hoax: How a Mysterious Cancer Drug Shook Organized Medicine" (U Illinois Press, 2024) 44:34

28d ago44:34

44:34

The brainchild of an obscure Yugoslav physician, Krebiozen emerged in 1951 as an alleged cancer treatment. Andrew Ivy, a University of Illinois vice president and a famed physiologist dubbed “the conscience of U.S. science,” wholeheartedly embraced Krebiozen. Ivy’s impeccable credentials and reputation made the treatment seem like another midcentur…

1
Yaacob Dweck, "Dissident Rabbi: The Life of Jacob Sasportas" (Princeton UP, 2019) 54:07

1M ago54:07

54:07

In 1665, Sabbetai Zevi, a self-proclaimed Messiah with a mass following throughout the Ottoman Empire and Europe, announced that the redemption of the world was at hand. As Jews everywhere rejected the traditional laws of Judaism in favor of new norms established by Sabbetai Zevi, and abandoned reason for the ecstasy of messianic enthusiasm, one ma…

1
Tom Boniface-Webb, "Modern Music Masters: Oasis" (MMM, 2020) 1:12:06

1M ago1:12:06

1:12:06

In the first book in the Modern Music Masters series, Tom Boniface-Webb examines the Manchester band Modern Music Masters-Oasis (MMM, 2020). Founded in 1994 and playing together until their spectacular and abrupt breakup in 2009, during their time together Oasis made an imprint on British music that will last for generations, impacting fans through…

1
Jess Whatcott, "Menace to the Future: A Disability and Queer History of Carceral Eugenics" (Duke UP, 2024) 1:00:22

1M ago1:00:22

1:00:22

In Menace to the Future: A Disability and Queer History of Carceral Eugenics (Duke UP, 2024), Jess Whatcott traces the link between US disability institutions and early twentieth-century eugenicist ideology, demonstrating how the legacy of those ideas continues to shape incarceration and detention today. Whatcott focuses on California, examining re…

1
Sara E. Johnson, "Encyclopédie Noire: The Making of Moreau de Saint-Méry's Intellectual World" (Omohundro Institute and UNC Press, 2023) 44:02

1M ago44:02

44:02

If you peer closely into the bookstores, salons, and diplomatic circles of the eighteenth-century Atlantic world, Médéric Louis Élie Moreau de Saint-Méry is bound to appear. As a lawyer, philosophe, and Enlightenment polymath, Moreau created and compiled an immense archive that remains a vital window into the social, political, and intellectual fau…

1
Magdalena J. Zaborowska, "Me and My House: James Baldwin's Last Decade in France" (Duke UP, 2018) 1:00:29

1M ago1:00:29

1:00:29

The last sixteen years of James Baldwin's life (1971–87) unfolded in a village in the South of France, in a sprawling house nicknamed “Chez Baldwin.” In Me and My House: James Baldwin's Last Decade in France (Duke UP, 2018), Magdalena J. Zaborowska employs Baldwin’s home space as a lens through which to expand his biography and explore the politics…

1
Mark Blake, "Dreams: The Many Lives of Fleetwood Mac" (Pegasus Books, 2024) 54:22

1M ago54:22

54:22

An illuminating deep-dive into everything Fleetwood Mac--the songs, the rivalries, the successes, and the failures—Dreams: The Many Lives of Fleetwood Mac (Pegasus Books, 2024) evokes the band's entire musical catalog as well as the complex human drama at the heart of the Fleetwood Mac story. Fleetwood Mac has had a ground-breaking career spanning …

1
James M. Scott, "Black Snow: Curtis Lemay, the Firebombing of Tokyo, and the Road to the Atomic Bomb" (Norton, 2024) 57:29

1M ago57:29

57:29

In our interview about Black Snow: Curtis LeMay, the Firebombing of Tokyo, and the Road to the Atomic Bomb (W. W. Norton & Company, 2022), James M. Scott discusses the principles and personalities involved in the most destructive air attack in history. Seven minutes past midnight on March 10, 1945, nearly 300 American B-29s thundered into the skies…

1
Kostas Kampourakis, "Darwin Mythology: Debunking Myths, Correcting Falsehoods" (Cambridge UP, 2024) 44:41

1M ago44:41

44:41

Many historical ﬁgures have their lives and works shrouded in myth, both in life and long after their deaths. Charles Darwin (1809–82) is no exception to this phenomenon and his hero-worship has become an accepted narrative. Darwin Mythology: Debunking Myths, Correcting Falsehoods (Cambridge UP, 2024) unpacks this narrative to rehumanize Darwin's s…

1
Jonathan Butler, "Join the Conspiracy: How a Brooklyn Eccentric Got Lost on the Right, Infiltrated the Left and Brought Down the Biggest Bombing Network in New York" (Fordham UP, 2024) 45:17

1M ago45:17

45:17

In the shadow of recent turmoil, Join the Conspiracy: How a Brooklyn Eccentric Got Lost on the Right, Infiltrated the Left and Brought Down the Biggest Bombing Network in New York (Fordham University Press, 2024) transports readers to a pivotal moment of division and dissent in American history: the late 1960s. Against the backdrop of the Vietnam W…

1
Episode #27: Summer Reading 2024 1:11:53

1M ago1:11:53

1:11:53

Welcome to One Bright Book! Join our hosts Frances, Rebecca, and Dorian as they return from their vacations, and discuss some of their summer reading. For our next episode, we will discuss THE HOUSE IN PARIS by Elizabeth Bowen. We would love to have you read along with us, and join us for our conversation coming to you in late September. Want to su…

1
Sanjay Lal, "Gandhi's Thought and Liberal Democracy" (Lexington Books, 2019) 53:26

1M ago53:26

53:26

Is religion indispensable to public life? What can Gandhi’s thought contribute to the modern state? With an intense focus on both the depth and practicality of Mahatma Gandhi's political and religious thought this book reveals the valuable insights Gandhi offers to anyone concerned about the prospects of liberalism in the contemporary world. In Gan…

1
R.I.P. Howard Ziehm: Mona… (and marijuana, music, and M.I.T.) – Podcast Reprise 1:42:23

1M ago1:42:23

1:42:23

Howard Ziehm, the pioneering adult film director, theater owner, author, polymath, and friend of The Rialto Report died last week in California. Over the years, I visited Howard on several occasions at his beautiful hill-top house in Malibu in California – “It’s the home that porn built”, he would joke. And he was right: Howard had enjoyed a long c…

Podcasts Worth a Listen

Iris West Podcasts

Podcasts Worth a Listen

Quick Reference Guide