Best Usmani Podcasts (2024)

1
130* Racism as Power Relation: A Discussion with Adaner Usmani (EF, JP) 33:59

9d ago33:59

33:59

Do we understand racism as the primary driving engine of American inequality? Or do we focus instead on the indirect ways that frequently hard-to-discern class inequality and inegalitarian power relations can produce racially differentiated outcomes? Adaner Usmani, Assistant Professor of Sociology and Social Studies at Harvard and on the editorial …

1
Racism as Power Relation: A Discussion with Adaner Usmani (EF, JP) 33:59

9d ago33:59

33:59

Do we understand racism as the primary driving engine of American inequality? Or do we focus instead on the indirect ways that frequently hard-to-discern class inequality and inegalitarian power relations can produce racially differentiated outcomes? Adaner Usmani, Assistant Professor of Sociology and Social Studies at Harvard and on the editorial …

1
Jill A. Fisher, "Adverse Events: Race, Inequality, and the Testing of New Pharmaceuticals" (NYU Press, 2020) 49:12

6h ago49:12

49:12

Imagine that you volunteer for the clinical trial of an experimental drug. The only direct benefit of participating is that you will receive up to $5,175. You must spend twenty nights literally locked in a research facility. You will be told what to eat, when to eat, and when to sleep. You will share a bedroom with several strangers. Who are you, a…

1
Charly Palmer and Karida Brown, "The New Brownies' Book: A Love Letter to Black Families" (Chronicle Books, 2023) 50:19

4m ago50:19

50:19

In 1920, W. E. B. Du Bois and the NAACP founders published The Brownies’ Book: A Monthly Magazine for Children of the Sun. A century later, The New Brownies' Book: A Love Letter to Black Families (Chronicle Books, 2023) recreates the very first publication created for Black youth in 1920 into a sensational anthology. Expanding on the mission of the…

1
Toby Green, "A Fistful of Shells: West Africa from the Rise of the Slave Trade to the Age of Revolution" (U Chicago Press, 2019) 49:04

4m ago49:04

49:04

All too often, the history of early modern Africa is told from the perspective of outsiders. In his book A Fistful of Shells: West Africa from the Rise of the Slave Trade to the Age of Revolution (University of Chicago Press, 2019), Toby Green draws upon a range of underutilized sources to describe the evolution of West Africa over a period of four…

1
Emily J. Lordi, "The Meaning of Soul: Black Music and Resilience Since the 1960s" (Duke UP, 2020) 57:36

4m ago57:36

57:36

Soul is one of those concepts that is often evoked, but rarely satisfactorily defined. In The Meaning of Soul: Black Music and Resilience Since the 1960s (Duke University Press 2020), Emily J. Lordi takes on the challenge of explaining “soul,” through a book that zooms in and out between sweeping ideas about suffering and resilience in Black cultur…

1
Theresa McCulla, "Insatiable City: Food and Race in New Orleans" (U Chicago Press, 2024) 1:13:02

2d ago1:13:02

1:13:02

A history of food in the Crescent City that explores race, power, social status, and labor. In Insatiable City: Food and Race in New Orleans (U Chicago Press, 2024), Theresa McCulla probes the overt and covert ways that the production of food and the discourse about it both created and reinforced many strains of inequality in New Orleans, a city si…

1
Kellie Carter Jackson, "We Refuse: A Forceful History of Black Resistance" (Seal Press, 2024) 57:39

3d ago57:39

57:39

Black resistance to white supremacy is often reduced to a simple binary, between Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s nonviolence and Malcolm X’s “by any means necessary.” In We Refuse: A Forceful History of Black Resistance (Seal Press, 2024), historian Kellie Carter Jackson urges us to move past this false choice, offering an unflinching examination of t…

1
Oneka LaBennett, "Global Guyana: Shaping Race, Gender, and Environment in the Caribbean and Beyond" (NYU Press, 2024) 53:52

10d ago53:52

53:52

Previously ranked among the hemisphere’s poorest countries, Guyana is becoming a global leader in per capita oil production, a shift which promises to profoundly transform the nation. This sea change presents a unique opportunity to dissect both the environmental impacts of modern-world resource extraction and the obscured yet damaging ways in whic…

1
#138 Choice and Comparison: The Truth About Relativity (English) 5:26

10d ago5:26

5:26

Have you ever wondered why you sometimes end up choosing things that seem like a good deal only because they're next to something more expensive? Today, we're diving into the fascinating world of relativity in decision-making. I'll take you through some eye-opening examples and real-world stories that reveal how our choices are often influenced by …

1
Faith Smith, "Strolling in the Ruins: The Caribbean's Non-Sovereign Modern in the Early Twentieth Century" (Duke UP, 2023) 1:04:31

11d ago1:04:31

1:04:31

In Strolling in the Ruins: The Caribbean's Non-Sovereign Modern in the Early Twentieth Century (Duke UP, 2023), Faith Smith engages with a period in the history of the Anglophone Caribbean often overlooked as nondescript, quiet, and embarrassingly pro-imperial within the larger narrative of Jamaican and Trinidadian nationalism. Between the 1865 Mor…

1
Ben Wright, "Bonds of Salvation: How Christianity Inspired and Limited American Abolitionism" (LSU Press, 2020) 22:25

11d ago22:25

22:25

Ben Wright's Bonds of Salvation: How Christianity Inspired and Limited American Abolitionism (LSU Press, 2020) demonstrates how religion structured the possibilities and limitations of American abolitionism during the early years of the republic. From the American Revolution through the eruption of schisms in the three largest Protestant denominati…

1
Kehbuma Langmia, "Black 'Race' and the White Supremacy Saga" (Anthem Press, 2024) 44:24

12d ago44:24

44:24

Dr. Langmia's book Black 'Race' and the White Supremacy Saga (Anthem Press, 2024) examines the conundrum that has haunted the Black and White ancestry for ages on what supremacy actually means. Is it Black or White supremacy? Granted, the term "White supremacy" has occupied the sociopolitical, cultural and economic discourse for ages, but what does…

1
Bayley J. Marquez, "Plantation Pedagogy: The Violence of Schooling Across Black and Indigenous Space" (U California Press, 2024) 1:15:07

13d ago1:15:07

1:15:07

Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, teachers, administrators, and policymakers fashioned a system of industrial education that attempted to transform Black and Indigenous peoples and land. This form of teaching—what Bayley J. Marquez names plantation pedagogy—was built on the claim that slavery and land dispossession are fundamentall…

1
On Michael Jackson: A Lecture by Margo Jefferson 48:45

14d ago48:45

48:45

In September 2006, Margo Jefferson spoke to the Institute about her book, On Michael Jackson (Vintage, 2007). Jefferson received the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for criticism when she was at the New York Times. Her 2015 book, Negroland: A Memoir, won the National Book Critics Circle Award. And in 2022, she published, Constructing a Nervous System, a memoir…

1
#137 The Zero Cost Trap: Why Free Can Be Expensive (English) 5:38

16d ago5:38

5:38

Why do we go crazy over free samples, free shipping, or buy-one-get-one-free deals? In this episode of "UppSkill Podcast" we uncover the hidden psychology behind our obsession with getting things for free. Discover how the powerful allure of zero cost can lead us to make choices that aren't always in our best interest. We’ll dive into fascinating e…

1
Jeremy Schipper, "Denmark Vesey's Bible: The Thwarted Revolt That Put Slavery and Scripture on Trial" (Princeton UP, 2022) 1:13:48

16d ago1:13:48

1:13:48

In Denmark Vesey's Bible: The Thwarted Revolt that Put Slavery and Scripture on Trial (Princeton UP, 2022), Dr. Jeremy Schipper tells the story of a free Black man accused of plotting an anti-slavery insurrection in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1822. Vesey was found guilty and hanged along with dozens of others accused of collaborating with him. …

1
Frederick Klaits et al., "Pentecostal Insight in a Segregated US City: Designs for Vitality" (Bloomsbury, 2022) 59:04

17d ago59:04

59:04

In Pentecostal Insight in a Segregated US City: Designs for Vitality (Bloomsbury, 2022), Frederick Klaits compares how members of one majority white and two African American churches in Buffalo, New York receive knowledge from God about their own and others' life circumstances. In the Pentecostal Christian faith, believers say that they acquire div…

1
Jerry Rafiki Jenkins, "Anti-Blackness and Human Monstrosity in Black American Horror Fiction" (Ohio State UP, 2024) 47:08

19d ago47:08

47:08

In Anti-Blackness and Human Monstrosity in Black American Horror Fiction (Ohio State UP, 2024), Jerry Rafiki Jenkins examines four types of human monsters that frequently appear in Black American horror fiction--the monsters of White rage, respectability, not-ness, and serial killing. Arguing that such monsters represent specific ideologies of Amer…

1
A Psychoanalytic Overview of Racism in America 48:12

19d ago48:12

48:12

The first podcast in this series was inspired by a documentary film made in 2014 called “Black Analysts Speak” as well as some of the findings in the Holmes Commission on Racial Equality in American Psychoanalysis published in 2023. It also considered the reasons why racism has persisted so long in America including perspectives from a psychoanalyt…

1
#136 The Power of Price Anchoring (English) 4:28

20d ago4:28

4:28

In this episode of "Uppskill Podcast," we delve into the fascinating world of price anchoring—a psychological phenomenon that shapes our perceptions and decisions in surprising ways. Join us as we explore how initial price points, or anchors, influence everything from everyday purchases to major financial decisions. We'll uncover real-world example…

1
Paula Marie Seniors, "Mae Mallory, the Monroe Defense Committee, and World Revolutions: African American Women Radical Activists" (U Georgia Press, 2024) 46:31

21d ago46:31

46:31

Mae Mallory, the Monroe Defense Committee, and World Revolutions: African American Women Radical Activists (U Georgia Press, 2024) explores the significant contributions of African American women radical activists from 1955 to 1995. It examines the 1961 case of African American working-class self-defense advocate Mae Mallory, who traveled from New …

1
Sally Stocksdale, "When Emancipation Came: The End of Enslavement on a Southern Plantation and a Russian Estate" (McFarland, 2022) 1:00:26

24d ago1:00:26

1:00:26

Linked by declarations of emancipation within the same five-year period, two countries shared human rights issues on two distinct continents. In When Emancipation Came: The End of Enslavement on a Southern Plantation and a Russian Estate (McFarland, 2022), readers will find a case-study comparison of the emancipation of Russian serfs on the Yazykov…

1
#135 Coke vs. Pepsi: The Hidden Power of Brand Expectations (English) 6:25

24d ago6:25

6:25

Join us on this captivating episode of "UppSkill Podcast" as we delve into the iconic Pepsi Challenge and unravel the hidden power of brand expectations. Discover how this simple yet revolutionary experiment revealed surprising truths about consumer behavior and the influence of branding on our preferences. Learn how our preconceived notions can sh…

1
Duana Fullwiley, "Tabula Raza: Mapping Race and Human Diversity in American Genome Science" (U California Press, 2024) 1:16:20

1M ago1:16:20

1:16:20

In Tabula Raza: Mapping Race and Human Diversity in American Genome Science (University of California Press, 2024), Duana Fullwiley has penned an intimate chronicle of laboratory life in the genomic age. She presents many of the influential scientists at the forefront of genetics who have redefined how we practice medicine and law and understand an…

1
Screwed and Chopped 35:55

1M ago35:55

35:55

Since the 1990s, many of Houston’s African American residents have customized cars and customized the sound of hip hop. Cars called “slabs” swerve a slow path through the city streets, banging out a distinctive local music that paid tribute to those very same streets and neighborhoods. Folklorist and Houston native Langston Collin Wilkins studies s…

1
Adrienne Brown, "The Residential Is Racial: A Perceptual History of Mass Homeownership" (Stanford UP, 2024) 1:01:52

1M ago1:01:52

1:01:52

Housing experts and activists have long described the foundational role race has played in the creation of mass homeownership. This book insistently tracks the inverse: the role of mass homeownership in changing the definition, perception, and value of race. In The Residential Is Racial: A Perceptual History of Mass Homeownership (Stanford Universi…

1
Financial Institutions and Enslavement 59:25

1M ago59:25

59:25

In this special episode, we talk to two authors about the role of financial institutions in enslavement. Sharon Ann Murphy, associate professor of history, argues in Banking on Slavery Financing Southern Expansion in the Antebellum United States (University of Chicago Press, 2023) that Southern banks’ willingness to use enslaved people as loan coll…

1
Corey J. Miles, "Vibe: The Sound and Feeling of Black Life in the American South" (U Mississippi Press, 2024) 48:11

1M ago48:11

48:11

In Vibe: The Sound and Feeling of Black Life in the American South (University of Mississippi Press, 2023), Corey J. Miles narrates how southern Black sound, feeling, and being is constantly policed, surveilled, and criminalized. In doing so, he re-narrates the region as the "carceral South," to capture the ways people in the South and beyond can f…

1
129* Vince Brown, Caribbean Vectors (EF, JP) 45:51

1M ago45:51

45:51

The largest slave uprising in the 18th century British Caribbean was also a node of the global conflict called the Seven Year’s War, though it isn’t usually thought of that way. In the first few days of the quarantine and our current geopolitical and epidemiological shitshow, John and Elizabeth spoke with Vincent Brown, who recently published Tacky…

1
Vince Brown, Caribbean Vectors (EF, JP) 45:51

1M ago45:51

45:51

The largest slave uprising in the 18th century British Caribbean was also a node of the global conflict called the Seven Year’s War, though it isn’t usually thought of that way. In the first few days of the quarantine and our current geopolitical and epidemiological shitshow, John and Elizabeth spoke with Vincent Brown, who recently published Tacky…

1
Matthew D. Morrison, "Blacksound: Making Race and Popular Music in the United States" (U California Press, 2024) 1:17:56

1M ago1:17:56

1:17:56

Blacksound: Making Race and Popular Music in the United States (U California Press, 2024) explores the sonic history of blackface minstrelsy and the racial foundations of American musical culture from the early 1800s through the turn of the twentieth century. With this namesake book, Matthew D. Morrison develops the concept of "Blacksound" to uncov…

1
Kyle Barnett, "Record Cultures: The Transformation of the U.S. Recording Industry" (U Michigan Press, 2020) 1:07:58

1M ago1:07:58

1:07:58

In Record Cultures: The Transformation of the U.S. Recording Industry (University of Michigan Press, 2020), Kyle Barnett tells the story of the smaller U.S. record labels in the 1920s that created the genres later to be known as blues, country, and jazz. Barnett also engages the early recording industry as entertainment media, considering the ways …

1
Richard E. Ocejo, "Sixty Miles Upriver: Gentrification and Race in a Small American City" (Princeton UP, 2024) 1:00:40

1M ago1:00:40

1:00:40

Newburgh is a small postindustrial city of some twenty-eight thousand people located sixty miles north of New York City in the Hudson River Valley. Like many other similarly sized cities across America, it has been beset with poverty and crime after decades of decline, with few opportunities for its predominantly minority residents. Sixty Miles Upr…

1
Larry Roeder and Barry Harrelson, "Dirt Don't Burn: A Black Community's Struggle for Educational Equality Under Segregation" (Georgetown UP, 2023) 54:59

2M ago54:59

54:59

The system of educational apartheid that existed in the United States until the Brown v. Board of Education decision and its aftermath has affected every aspect of life for Black Americans. Larry Roeder and Barry Harrelson's book Dirt Don't Burn: A Black Community's Struggle for Educational Equality Under Segregation (Georgetown UP, 2023) is the ri…

1
Ears Racing 58:21

2M ago58:21

58:21

This episode, we talk with Jennifer Lynn Stoever–editor of the influential sound studies blog Sounding Out!–about her new book, The Sonic Color Line: Race and the Cultural Politics of Listening (NYU Press, 2016). We tend to think of race and racism as visual phenomena, but Stoever challenges white listeners to examine how racism can infect our ears…

1
Jesse McCarthy, "The Blue Period: Black Writing in the Early Cold War" (U Chicago Press, 2024) 1:13:05

2M ago1:13:05

1:13:05

‘The result is that, at the present time, the world is at an impasse.’ In 1956, Aimé Césaire pronounced the world to be at an impasse while renouncing his allegiance to the French Communist Party. In Jesse McCarthy’s The Blue Period: Black Writing in the Early Cold War (U Chicago Press, 2024), this foreclosure of ideological avenues, this loss of b…

1
Danielle R. Olden, "Racial Uncertainties: Mexican Americans, School Desegregation, and the Making of Race in Post–Civil Rights America" (U California Press, 2022) 1:21:57

2M ago1:21:57

1:21:57

Mexican Americans have often fit uncertainly into the white/non-white binary that has goverens much of American history. After Colorado, and much of the rest of the American West, became American claimed territory after the Mexican-Americna War in 1848, thousands of formerly Mexican citizens became American citizens. Flash foward a century to post-…

1
Laura Helton, "Scattered and Fugitive Things: How Black Collectors Created Archives and Remade History" (Columbia UP, 2024) 55:31

2M ago55:31

55:31

During the first half of the twentieth century, a group of collectors and creators dedicated themselves to documenting the history of African American life. At a time when dominant institutions cast doubt on the value or even the idea of Black history, these bibliophiles, scrapbookers, and librarians created an enduring set of African diasporic arc…

1
Benjamin Bryce and David M. K. Sheinin, "Race and Transnationalism in the Americas" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2021) 39:15

2M ago39:15

39:15

Edited by Benjamin Bryce and David Sheinin, Race and Transnationalism in the Americas (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2021), highlights the importance of transnational forces in shaping the concept of race and understanding of national belonging across the Americas, from the late nineteenth century to the present times. The book also examines how …

1
Ryan Reft, "Heroin and Chocolate City: Black Community Responses to Drug Addiction in the Nation’s Capital, 1967-1973" (2024) 55:01

2M ago55:01

55:01

Ryan Reft is a historian in the Manuscript Division at the Library of Congress, where he oversees collections pertaining to 20th and 21st century domestic politics and policies. He received his PhD in U.S. urban history from the University of California San Diego in 2014, and his writing has appeared all over the place, from edited volumes to acade…

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

2M 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
Adriana Chira, "Patchwork Freedoms: Law, Slavery, and Race beyond Cuba's Plantations" (Cambridge UP, 2022) 40:15

2M ago40:15

40:15

In nineteenth-century Santiago de Cuba, the island of Cuba's radical cradle, Afro-descendant peasants forged freedom and devised their own formative path to emancipation. Drawing on understudied archives, this pathbreaking work, Patchwork Freedoms: Law, Slavery, and Race beyond Cuba's Plantations (Cambridge UP, 2022) unearths a new history of Black…

1
Christopher Tounsel, "Bounds of Blackness: African Americans, Sudan, and the Politics of Solidarity" (Cornell UP, 2024) 52:01

2M ago52:01

52:01

Christopher Tounsel's book Bounds of Blackness: African Americans, Sudan, and the Politics of Solidarity (Cornell UP, 2024) explores the history of Black America's intellectual and cultural engagement with the modern state of Sudan. Ancient Sudan occupies a central place in the Black American imaginary as an exemplar of Black glory, pride, and civi…

1
Kevin Woodson, "The Black Ceiling: How Race Still Matters in the Elite Workplace" (U Chicago Press, 2023) 37:22

2M ago37:22

37:22

America's elite law firms, investment banks, and management consulting firms are known for grueling hours, low odds of promotion, and personnel practices that push out any employees who don't advance. While most people who begin their careers in these institutions leave within several years, work there is especially difficult for Black professional…

1
Courtney Thorsson, "The Sisterhood: How a Network of Black Women Writers Changed American Culture" (Columbia UP, 2023) 1:00:46

2M ago1:00:46

1:00:46

The Sisterhood: How a Network of Black Women Writers Changed American Culture (Columbia University Press, 2023) explores how an incredible group of Black women writers, including Alice Walker, June Jordan, Toni Morrison, Ntozake Shange, Audre Lorde, and writers and intellectuals convened an informal group called “The Sisterhood” and how they transf…

1
Rachelle Winkle-Wagner, "The Chosen We: Black Women's Empowerment in Higher Education" (SUNY Press, 2023) 37:37

2M ago37:37

37:37

The Chosen We: Black Women's Empowerment in Higher Education (SUNY Press, 2023) elevates the oral histories of 105 accomplished, college-educated Black women who earned success despite experiencing reprehensible racist and sexist barriers. The central argument is that these women succeeded in and beyond college by developing a Chosen We—a community…

1
Kendra Y. Hamilton, "Romancing the Gullah in the Age of Porgy and Bess" (U Georgia Press, 2024) 1:10:00

2M ago1:10:00

1:10:00

Dr. Kendra Y. Hamilton’s Romancing the Gullah in the Age of Porgy and Bess (University of Georgia Press, 2024) is a literary and cultural history of the Gullah Geechee Coast, a four-state area that is one of only a handful of places that can truly be said to be the “cradle of Black culture” in the United States. An African American ethnic group who…

1
Luis H. H. Favela, "The Ecological Brain: Unifying the Sciences of Brain, Body, and Environment" (Routledge, 2024) 59:33

2M ago59:33

59:33

Ecological psychology holds that perception and action are best explained in terms of dynamic interactions between brain, body, and environment, not in classical cognitivist terms of the manipulation of representations in the head. This anti-representationalist stance, argues Luis Favela, makes ecological psychology deeply at odds with dominant tre…

1
Robert K. D. Colby, "An Unholy Traffic: Slave Trading in the Civil War South" (Oxford UP, 2024) 42:47

2M ago42:47

42:47

The Confederate States of America was born in defense of slavery and, after a four-year struggle to become an independent slaveholding republic, died as emancipation dawned. Between Fort Sumter to Appomattox, Confederates bought and sold thousands African American men, women, and children. These transactions in humanity made the internal slave trad…

Podcasts Worth a Listen

Usmani Podcasts

Podcasts Worth a Listen

Quick Reference Guide