Best Outcast Islands Podcasts (2025)

1
Sarah Kenny, "Growing Up and Going Out: Youth Culture, Commerce, and Leisure Space in Post-War Britain" (Manchester UP, 2025) 43:44

17h ago43:44

43:44

Sarah Kenny Growing up and going out: Youth culture, commerce and leisure space in post-war Britain Manchester University Press 2025 How did young people spend their time in the post-war era? In Growing up and going out: Youth culture, commerce and leisure space in post-war Britain Sarah Kenny, a lecturer in Modern History at the University of Birm…

1
Sarah Gold McBride "Whiskerology: The Culture of Hair in Nineteenth-Century America" (Harvard UP, 2025) 1:13:20

17h ago1:13:20

1:13:20

Hair is always and everywhere freighted with meaning. In nineteenth-century America, however, hair took on decisive new significance as the young nation wrestled with its identity. During the colonial period, hair was usually seen as bodily discharge, even “excrement.” But as Dr. Sarah Gold McBride shows in Whiskerology: The Culture of Hair in Nine…

1
Amogh Dhar Sharma, "The Backstage of Democracy: India's Election Campaigns and the People Who Manage Them" (Cambridge UP, 2024) 1:30:12

17h ago1:30:12

1:30:12

About the Book Over the last decade, election campaigns in India have undergone a dramatic shift. Political parties increasingly rely on political consulting firms, social media volunteers, pollsters, data-driven insights, and hashtag wars to mobilize voters. What is driving these changes in the landscape of electioneering? The Backstage of Democra…

1
Elana Gomel, "The Pilgrim Soul: Being a Russian in Israel" (Cambria Press, 2009) 1:06:01

17h ago1:06:01

1:06:01

Elana Gomel is a former senior lecturer in the Department of English and American Studies at Tel Aviv University, where she also served as department chair for two years. This book investigates the Russian community in Israel, analyzing the narratives through which Russian Jewry defines itself and linking them to the legacy of Soviet history. Gomel…

1
Bianca Marais, "A Most Puzzling Murder" (Harper Collins, 2025) 35:59

17h ago35:59

35:59

In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Bianca Marais about her delightful and highly entertaining new book, A Most Puzzling Murder (Harper Collins, 2025), How do you solve a murder that hasn't happened yet? Destiny Whip is a former child prodigy, world-renowned enigmatologist and very, very alone. A life filled with loss has made her …

1
Sergey Radchenko, "To Run the World: The Kremlin's Cold War Bid for Global Power" (Cambridge UP, 2024) 1:14:35

17h ago1:14:35

1:14:35

What would it feel like To Run the World? The Soviet rulers spent the Cold War trying desperately to find out. In To Run The World: The Kremlin’s Cold War Bid for Global Power, Sergey Radchenko provides an unprecedented deep dive into the psychology of the Kremlin's decision-making. He reveals how the Soviet struggle with the United States and Chin…

1
Todd May "Should We Go Extinct?: A Philosophical Dilemma for Our Unbearable Times" (Crown, 2024) 1:02:22

17h ago1:02:22

1:02:22

These days it’s harder than ever to watch TV, scroll social media, or even just sit at home looking out of the window without contemplating the question at the heart of philosopher Todd May’s Should We Go Extinct?: A Philosophical Dilemma for Our Unbearable Times (Crown, 2024). Facing climate destruction and the revived specter of nuclear annihilat…

1
Eric Blanc, "We Are the Union: How Worker-to-Worker Organizing Is Revitalizing Labor and Winning Big" (Univ of California Press, 2025) 55:47

17h ago55:47

55:47

Eric Blanc is an assistant professor of labor studies at Rutgers University, researching new workplace organizing, strikes, digital labor activism, and working-class politics. He is the author of Red State Revolt: The Teachers’ Strike Wave and Working-Class Politics (Verso 2019) and his writings have appeared in journals such as Politics & Society,…

1
Sarah Gold McBride "Whiskerology: The Culture of Hair in Nineteenth-Century America" (Harvard UP, 2025) 1:13:20

17h ago1:13:20

1:13:20

Hair is always and everywhere freighted with meaning. In nineteenth-century America, however, hair took on decisive new significance as the young nation wrestled with its identity. During the colonial period, hair was usually seen as bodily discharge, even “excrement.” But as Dr. Sarah Gold McBride shows in Whiskerology: The Culture of Hair in Nine…

1
Sergey Radchenko, "To Run the World: The Kremlin's Cold War Bid for Global Power" (Cambridge UP, 2024) 1:14:35

17h ago1:14:35

1:14:35

What would it feel like To Run the World? The Soviet rulers spent the Cold War trying desperately to find out. In To Run The World: The Kremlin’s Cold War Bid for Global Power, Sergey Radchenko provides an unprecedented deep dive into the psychology of the Kremlin's decision-making. He reveals how the Soviet struggle with the United States and Chin…

1
Tochi Onyebuchi, "Harmattan Season: A Novel" (Tor Books, 2025) 33:49

17h ago33:49

33:49

Tochi Onyebuchi’s novel Harmattan Season: A Novel (Tor Books, 2025) follows Boubacar, a veteran and private eye living in French occupied West Africa, as he begins a reluctant journey to discover what happened to the bleeding woman who stumbled onto his doorway and vanished soon after. That mystery quickly drags Bouba into exactly the kind of viole…

1
Jade Elizabeth French, "Modernist Poetics of Ageing: The Late Lives and Late Styles of Mina Loy, Djuna Barnes, and H.D." (Oxford UP, 2025) 1:04:09

17h ago1:04:09

1:04:09

What happens when the 'modern woman' ages? Modernist Poetics of Ageing (Oxford University Press, 2025) answers this question by being the first book-length study of three late modernist women's writers. Drawing on their place within wider modernist networks, this monograph is primarily framed around work by Mina Loy, H.D. and Djuna Barnes, who are …

1
S3E5 - The Dorr Rebellion 26:59

18h ago26:59

26:59

1841 - 1845 | Thomas Wilson Dorr leads a political upheaval aimed at modernizing the state's archaic and extremely undemocratic government. My Favorite Books on this Topic: Democracy in Decline: Rhode Island's Constitutional Crisis Development 1776 - 1841 by Patrick T. Conley The People's Martyr: Thomas Wilson Dorr and His 1842 Rhode Island Rebelli…

1
Talin Suciyan, "Outcasting Armenians: Tanzimat of the Provinces" (Syracuse UP, 2023) 47:03

1d ago47:03

47:03

The history of Tanzimat in the Ottoman Empire has largely been narrated as a unique period of equality, reform, and progress, often framing it as the backdrop to modern Turkey. Inspired by Walter Benjamin's exhortation to study the oppressed to understand the rule and the ruler, Talin Suciyan reexamines this era from the perspective of the Armenian…

1
Andrea Graziosi and Frank E. Sysyn, "Communism and Hunger: The Ukrainian, Chinese, Kazakh, and Soviet Famines in Comparative Perspective" (CIUS Press, 2016) 1:13:33

1d ago1:13:33

1:13:33

In this volume, leading specialists examine the affinities and differences between the pan-Soviet famine of 1931–1933, the Ukrainian Holodomor, the Kazakh great hunger, and the famine in China in 1959–1961. The contributors presented papers at a conference organized by the Holodomor Research and Education Consortium in 2014. Learn more about your a…

1
Michael Grunwald, "We Are Eating the Earth: The Race to Fix Our Food System and Save Our Climate" (Simon & Schuster, 2025) 49:39

1d ago49:39

49:39

Michael Grunwald is a well renown journalist, who over the last thirty years has focused on public policy and national politics, with the last fifteen years having him zeroing in or climate-related issues. His current book, which he wrote this after six years of research. It was a passionate journey to understand, not to advocate for any position. …

1
John P. Gribbin, "Gribbin: A Family History of Ulster" (Ulster Historical Foundation, 2023) 37:58

1d ago37:58

37:58

This is a comprehensive history of the Gribbin (Gribben/Gribbon) family. The author traces his own family line back to the early nineteenth century, setting it within the context of the wider Gribbin family story. He then tracks back through time to pinpoint Gribbins wherever they appear in the record. He has trawled the available sources, compilin…

1
Michael Grunwald, "We Are Eating the Earth: The Race to Fix Our Food System and Save Our Climate" (Simon & Schuster, 2025) 49:39

1d ago49:39

49:39

Michael Grunwald is a well renown journalist, who over the last thirty years has focused on public policy and national politics, with the last fifteen years having him zeroing in or climate-related issues. His current book, which he wrote this after six years of research. It was a passionate journey to understand, not to advocate for any position. …

1
Keith Merith, "A Darker Shade of Blue: A Police Officer's Memoir" (ECW Press, 2024) 1:15:54

1d ago1:15:54

1:15:54

A transparent first-hand account of a Black officer maneuvering through three terrifying yet rewarding decades of policing, all while seeking reform in law enforcement When 16-year-old Keith Merith finds himself pulled over, berated, and degraded by a white police officer, he’s outraged. He’s done nothing wrong. But the officer has the power, and h…

1
Mark Blyth and Nicolò Fraccaroli, "Inflation: A Guide for Users and Losers" (W. W. Norton & Co, 2025) 55:18

1d ago55:18

55:18

Inflation is back, and its impact can be felt everywhere, from the grocery store to the mortgage market to the results of elections around the world. What's more, tariffs and trade wars threaten to accelerate inflation again. Yet the conventional wisdom about inflation is stuck in the past. Since the 1970s, there has only really been one playbook f…

1
Talin Suciyan, "Outcasting Armenians: Tanzimat of the Provinces" (Syracuse UP, 2023) 47:03

1d ago47:03

47:03

The history of Tanzimat in the Ottoman Empire has largely been narrated as a unique period of equality, reform, and progress, often framing it as the backdrop to modern Turkey. Inspired by Walter Benjamin's exhortation to study the oppressed to understand the rule and the ruler, Talin Suciyan reexamines this era from the perspective of the Armenian…

1
Jennifer Kabat, "Nightshining: A Memoir in Four Floods" (Milkweed Editions, 2025) 1:02:08

1d ago1:02:08

1:02:08

Hello, my name is Eric LeMay, a host on New Books in Literature, a channel on the New Books Network. Today I interview Jennifer Kabat. Kabat is writer I've followed and admired for decades. T.S. Eliot once said of Henry James, "He had a mind so fine that no idea could violate it." Kabat has a mind so sweeping, so generous that no detail escapes it.…

1
Ross A. Kennedy, "The United States and the Origins of World War II in Europe" (Taylor & Francis, 2025) 1:27:00

1d ago1:27:00

1:27:00

The United States and the Origins of World War II in Europe (Taylor & Francis, 2025), spans 1914–1939 to provide a concise interpretation of the role the United States played in the origins of the Second World War. It synthesizes recent scholarship about interwar international politics while also presenting an original interpretation of the sources…

1
John DeVore, "Theatre Kids: A True Tale of Off-Off Broadway" (Applause, 2024) 55:21

1d ago55:21

55:21

In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with John Devore about his phenomenal memoir, Theatre Kids: A True Tale of Off-Off Broadway (Applause, 2024). Friendship. Grief. Jazz hands. In 2004, in a small, windowless theater in then-desolate Williamsburg, Brooklyn, an eccentric family of broke art-school survivors staged an experimental, four-h…

1
Jennifer R. Nájera, "Learning to Lead: Undocumented Students Mobilizing Education" (Duke UP, 2024) 1:16:15

3d ago1:16:15

1:16:15

In Learning to Lead: Undocumented Students Mobilizing Education (Duke University Press, 2024), Jennifer R. Nájera explores the intersections of education and activism among undocumented students at the University of California, Riverside. Taking an expansive view of education, Nájera shows how students’ experiences in college—both in and out of the…

1
Shayna M. Silverstein, "Fraught Balance: The Embodied Politics of Dabke Dance Music in Syria" (Wesleyan UP, 2024) 58:30

3d ago58:30

58:30

A vivid and intricate study of dance music traditions that reveals the many contradictions of being Syrian in the 21st century Dabke, one of Syria's most beloved dance music traditions, is at the center of the country's war and the social tensions that preceded conflict. Drawing on almost two decades of ethnographic, archival, and digital research,…

1
Stacy Horn, "Damnation Island: Poor, Sick, Mad, and Criminal in 19th-Century New York" (Algonquin Books, 2019) 34:22

3d ago34:22

34:22

Conceived as the most modern, humane incarceration facility the world had ever seen, New York's Blackwell's Island, site of a lunatic asylum, two prisons, an almshouse, and a number of hospitals, quickly became, in the words of a visiting Charles Dickens, "a lounging, listless madhouse." Digging through city records, newspaper articles, and archiva…

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